3  1822  01243  2951 


PR 


3   1822  01243  2951 


AN 


OUTLINE  SKETCH 


OF 


ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

BY 

HENRY  A.   BEERS. 


NEW  YORK: 

CHAUTAUQUA     PRESS, 

C.  L.  S.  C.  Department, 

8os  BROADWAY. 


The  required  books  of  the  C.  L.  S.  C.  are  recom- 
mended by  a  Council  of  six.  It  must,  however,  be 
understood  that  recommendation  does  not  involve 
an  approval  by  the  Council^  or  by  any  member  of  it, 
of  every  principle  or  doctr.ne  contained  in  the  book 
recommended. 


.franklin  13rt«s: 

BAND,  AYEKY,  AND  COMPANY, 
BOSTON. 


Copyright  1886,  by  PHILLIPS  &  HUNT,  805  Broadway,  New  York. 


PREFACE. 


IN  so  brief  a  history  of  so  rich  a  literature, 
the  problem  is  how  to  get  room  enough  to 
give,  not  an  adequate  impression — that  is  im- 
possible— but  any  impression  at  all  of  the  sub- 
ject. To  do  this  I  have  crowded  out  every 
thing  but  belles-lettres.  Books  in  philosophy, 
history,  science,  etc.,  however  important  in 
the  history  of  English  thought,  receive  the 
merest  incidental  mention,  or  even  no  men- 
tion at  all.  Again,  I  have  omitted  the  litera- 
ture of  the  Anglo-Saxon  period,  which  is  writ- 
ten in  a  language  nearly  as  hard  for  a  mod- 
ern Englishman  to  read  as  German  is,  or 
Dutch.  Caedmon  and  Cynewulf  are  no  more 
a  part  of  English  literature  than  Vergil  and 
Horace  are  of  Italian.  I  have  also  left  out 


4  PREFACE. 

the  vernacular  literature  of  the  Scotch  before 
the  time  of  Burns.  Up  to  the  date  of  the 
union  Scotland  was  a  separate  kingdom,  and 
its  literature  had  a  development  independent 
of  the  English,  though  parallel  witn  it. 

In  dividing  the  history  into  periods,  I  have 
followed,  with  some  modifications,  the  divis- 
ions made  by  Mr.  Stopford  Brooke  in  his 
excellent  little  Primer  of  English  Literature. 
A  short  reading  course  is  appended  to  each 

chapter. 

HENRY  A.  BEERS. 


CONTENTS. 


I.  FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER,  1066-1400.  7 

II.  FROM  CHAUCER  TO  SPENSER,  1400-1599 38 

III.  THE  AGE  OF  SHAKSPERE,  1564-1616 72 

IV.  THE  AGE  OF  MILTON,  1608-1674 121 

V.  FROM   THE   RESTORATION   TO  THE  DEATH  OF 

POPE,  1660-1744 159 

VI.  FROM  THE  DEATH  OF   POPE  TO  THE  FRENCH 

REVOLUTION,  1744-1789 186 

VII.  FROM     THE    FRENCH    REVOLUTION     TO     THE 

DEATH  OF  SCOTT,  1789-1832 218 

VIII.  FROM   THE   DEATH  OF  SCOTT  TO  THE  PRESENT 

TIME,  1832-1886 262 


OUTLINE   SKETCH 

OF 

ENGLISH   LITERATURE. 


CHAPTER  I. 

FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER, 
1066-1400. 

THE  Norman  conquest  of  England,  in  the  nth 
century,  made  a  break  in  the  natural  growth  of  the 
English  language  and  literature.  The  old  English 
or  Anglo-Saxon  had  been  a  purely  Germanic 
speech,  with  a  complicated  grammar  and  a  full  set 
of  inflections.  For  three  hundred  years  following 
the  battle  of  Hastings  this  native  tongue  was_  driven 
from  the  king's  court  and  the  courts  of  law,  from 
parliament,  school,  and  university.  During  all 
this  time  there  were  two  languages  spoken  in  En- 
gland. Norman  French  was  the  birth-tongue  of 
the  upper  classes  and  English  of  the  lower.  When 
the  latter  finally  got  the  better  in  the  struggle,  and 
became,  about  the  middle  of  the  i4th  century,  the 
national  speech  of  all  England,  it  was  no  longer 
the  English  of  King  Alfred.  It  was  a  new  lan- 
guage, a  grammarless  tongue,  almost  wholly 


8  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

stripped  of  its  inflections.  It  had  lost  a  half  of 
its  old  words,  and  had  filled  their  places  with 
French  equivalents.  The  Norman  lawyers  had 
introduced  legal  terms ;  the  ladies  and  courtiers, 
words  of  dress  and  courtesy.  The  knight  had 
imported  the  vocabulary  of  war  and  of  the  chase. 
The  master-builders  of  the  Norman  castles  and 
cathedrals  contributed  technical  expressions  prop- 
er to  the  architect  and  the  mason.  The  art  of 
cooking  was  French.  The  naming  of  the  living 
animals,  ox,  swine,  sheep,  deer,  was  left  to  the  Saxon 
churl  who  had  the-  herding  of  them,  while  the 
dressed  meats,  beef,  pork,  mutton,  venison,  received 
their  baptism  from  the  table-talk  of  his  Norman 
master.  The  four  orders  of  begging  friars,  and 
especially  the  Franciscans  or  Gray  Friars,  intro- 
duced into  England  in  1224,  became  interme- 
diaries between  the  high  and  the  low.  They  went 
about  preaching  to  the  poor,  and  in  their  sermons 
they  intermingled  French  with  English.  In  their 
hands,  too,  was  almost  all  the  science  of  the  day; 
their  medicine,  botany,  and  astronomy  displaced  the 
old  nomenclature  of  leechdom,  wort-cunning,  and 
star-craft.  And,  finally,  the  translators  of  French 
poems  often  found  it  easier  to  transfer  a  foreign 
word  bodily  than  to  seek  out  a  native  synonym, 
particularly  when  the  former  supplied  them  with 
a  rhyme.  But  the  innovation  reached  even  to  the 
commonest  words  in  every-day  use,  so  that  voice 
drove  out  steven,  poor  drove  out  earm,  and  color, 
use,  and  place  made  good  their  footing  beside  hue, 


FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER.         9 

wont,  and  stead.  A  great  part  of  the  English  words 
that  were  left  were  so  changed  in  spelling  and 
pronunciation  as  to  be  practically  new.  Chaucer 
stands,  in  date,  midway  between  King  Alfred  and 
Alfred  Tennyson,  but  his  English  differs  vastly 
more  from  the  former's  than  from  the  latter's  To 
Chaucer  Anglo-Saxon  was  as  much  a  dead  lan- 
guage as  it  is  to  us. 

The  classical  Anglo-Saxon,  moreover,  had  been 
the  Wessex  dialect,  spoken  and  written  at  Alfred's 
capital,  Winchester.  When  the  French  had  dis- 
placed this  as  the  language  of  culture,  there  was 
no  longer  a  "  king's  English  "  or  any  literary  stand- 
ard. The  sources  of  modern  standard  English 
are  to  be  found  in  the  East  Midland,  spoken  in 
Lincoln,  Norfolk,  Suffolk,  Cambridge,  and  neigh- 
boring shires.  Here  the  old  Anglian  had  been 
corrupted  by  the  Danish  settlers,  and  rapidly  threw 
off  its  inflections  when  it  became  a  spoken  and 
no  longer  a  written  language,  after  the  Conquest. 
The  West  Saxon,  clinging  more  tenaciously  to 
ancient  forms,  sunk  into  the  position  of  a  local 
dialect ;  while  the  East  Midland,  spreading  to  Lon- 
don, Oxford,  and  Cambridge,  became  the  literary 
English  in  which  Chaucer  wrote. 

The  Normans  brought  in  also  new  intellectual 
influences  and  new  forms  of  literature.  They 
were  a  cosmopolitan  people,  and  they  connected 
England  with  the  continent.  Lanfranc  and  An- 
selm,  the  first  two  Norman  archbishops  of  Canter- 
bury, were  learned  and  splendid  prelates  of  a 


io  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

type  quite  unknown  to  the  Anglo-Saxons.  They 
introduced  the  scholastic  philosophy  taught  at  the 
University  of  Paris,  and  the  reformed  discipline  of 
the  Norman  abbeys.  They  bound  the  English 
Church  more  closely  to  Rome,  and  officered  it  with 
Normans.  English  bishops  were  deprived  of  their 
sees  for  illiteracy,  and  French  abbots  were  set 
over  monasteries  of  Saxon  monks.  Down  to  the 
middle  of  the  i4th  century  the  learned  literature 
of  England  was  mostly  in  Latin,  and  the  polite 
literature  in  French.  English  did  not  at  any  time 
altogether  cease  to  be  a  written  language,  but  the 
extant  remains  of  the  period  from  1066  to  1200 
are  few  and,  with  one  exception,  unimportant. 
After  1200  English  came  more  and  more  into 
written  use,  but  mainly  in  translations,  paraphrases, 
and  imitations  of  French  works.  The  native 
genius  was  at  school,  and  followed  awkwardly  the 
copy  set  by  its  master. 

The  Anglo-Saxon  poetry,  for  example,  had  been 
rhythmical  and  alliterative.  It  was  commonly 
written  in  lines  containing  four  rhythmical  accents 
and  with  three  of  the  accented  syllables  allitera- 
ting. 

^este  hine  thd  rum-heort  ;  reced  hlifade 
6"eap  and  ^old-fah,  g&st  inne  swaf. 

Rested  him  then  the  great-hearted  ;  the  hall  towered 
Roomy  and  gold-bright,  the  guest  slept  within. 

This  rude  energetic  verse  the  Saxon  scdp  had 
sung  to  his  harp  or  glee-beam,  dwelling  on  the  em- 


FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER.        n 

phatic  syllables,  passing  swiftly  over  the  others 
which  were  of  undetermined  number  and  position 
in  the  line.  It  was  now  displaced  by  the  smooth 
metrical  verse  with  rhymed  endings,  which  the 
French  introduced  and  which  our  modern  poets 
use,  a  verse  fitted  to  be  recited  rather  than  sung. 
The  old  English  alliterative  verse  continued,  in- 
deed, in  occasional  use  to  the  i6th  century.  But 
it  was  linked  to  a  forgotten  literature  and  an  ob- 
solete dialect,  and  was  doomed  to  give  way. 
Chaucer  lent  his  great  authority  to  the  more 
modern  verse  system,  and  his  own  literary  models 
and  inspirers  were  all  foreign,  French  or  Italian. 
Literature  in  England  began  to  be  once  more 
English  and  truly  national  in  the  hands  of  Chaucer 
and  his  contemporaries,  but  it  was  the  literature 
of  a  nation  cut  off  from  its  own  past  by  three  cent- 
uries of  foreign  rule. 

The  most  noteworthy  English  document  of  the 
nth  and  i2th  centuries  was  the  continuation  of 
the  Anglo-Saxon  chronicle.  Copies  of  these  an- 
nals, differing  somewhat  among  themselves,  had 
been  kept  at  the  monasteries  in  Winchester, 
Abingdon,  Worcester,  and  elsewhere.  The  yearly 
entries  were  mostly  brief,  dry  records  of  passing 
events,  though  occasionally  they  become  full  and 
animated.  The  fen  country  of  Cambridge  and 
Lincolnshire  was  a  region  of  monasteries.  Here 
were  the  great  abbeys  of  Peterborough  and  Croy- 
land  and  Ely  minster.  One  of  the  earliest  English 
songs'  tells  how  the  savage  heart  of  the  Danish 


12  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

king  Cnut  was  softened  by  the  singing  of  the  monks 
in  Ely. 

Merie  sungen  mur.eches  binnen  Ely 

Tha  Cnut  chyning  reu  ther  by  ; 

Roweth,  cnihtes,  noer  the  land, 

And  here  we  thes  muneches  sang. 

It  was  among  the  dikes  and  marshes  of  this  fen 
country  that  the  bold  outlaw  Hereward,  "  the  last 
of  the  English,"  held  out  for  some  years  against 
the  conqueror.  And  it  was  here,  in  the  rich 
abbey  of  Burch  or  Peterborough,  the  ancient 
Medeshamstede  (meadow- homestead)  that  the 
chronicle  was  continued  for  nearly  a  century  after 
the  Conquest,  breaking  off  abruptly  in  1154,  the 
date  of  King  Stephen's  death.  Peterborough  had 
received  a  new  Norman  abbot,  Turold,  "  a  very 
stern  man,"  and  the  entry  in  the  chronicle  for 
1170  tells  how  Hereward  and  his  gang,  with  his 
Danish  backers,  thereupon  plundered  the  abbey 
of  its  treasures,  which  were  first  removed  to  Ely, 
and  then  carried  off  by  the  Danish  fleet  and  sunk, 
lost,  or  squandered.  The  English  in  the  later 
portions  of  this  Peterborough  chronicle  becomes 
gradually  more  modern,  and  falls  away  more  and 
more  from  the  strict  grammatical  standards  of  the 
classical  Anglo-Saxon.  It  is  a  most  valuable  his- 
torical monument,  and  some  passages  of  it  are 
written  with  great  vividness,  notably  the  sketch  of 
William  the  Conqueror  put  down  in  the  year  of 
his  death  (1086)  by  one  who  had  "looked  upon 
him  and  at  another  time  dwelt  in  his  court." 


FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CiiAucER.        13 

"  He  who  was  before  a  rich  king,  and  lord  of 
many  a  land,  he  had  not  then  of  all  his  land  but 
a  piece  of  seven  feet.  .  .  .  Likewise  he  was  a  very 
stark  man  and  a  terrible,  so  that  one  durst  do 
nothing  against  his  will.  .  .  .  Among  other  things 
is  not  to  be  forgotten  the  good  peace  that  he 
made  in  this  land,  so  that  a  man  might  fare  over 
his  kingdom  with  his  bosom  full  of  gold  unhurt. 
He  set  up  a  great  deer  preserve,  and  he  laid  laws 
therewith  that  whoso  should  slay  hart  or  hind,  he 
should  be  blinded.  As  greatly  did  he  love  the  tall 
deer  as  if  he  were  their  father." 

With  the  discontinuance  of  the  Peterborough 
annals,  English  history  written  in  English  prose 
ceased  for  three  hundred  years.  The  thread  of 
the  nation's  story  was  kept  up  in  Latin  chronicles, 
compiled  by  writers  partly  of  English  and  partly 
of  Norman  descent.  The  earliest  of  these,  such 
as  Ordericus  Vitalis,  Simeon  of  Durham,  Henry 
of  Huntingdon,  and  William  of  Malmesbury, 
were  contemporary  with  the  later  entries  of 
the  Saxon  chronicle.  The  last  of  them,  Mat- 
thew of  Westminster,  finished  his  work  in  1273. 
About  1300  Robert,  a  monk  of  Gloucester,  com- 
posed a  chronicle  in  English  verse,  following 
in  the  main  the  authority  of  the  Latin  chron- 
icles, and  he  was  succeeded  by  other  rhyming 
chroniclers  in  the  i4th  century.  In  the  hands  of 
these  the  true  history  of  the  Saxon  times  was 
overlaid  with  an  ever-increasing  mass  of  fable 
and  legend.  All  real  knowledge  of  the  period 


14  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

dwindled  away  until  in  Capgrave's  Chronicle  of 
England,  written  in  prose  in  1463-64,  hardly  any 
thing  of  it  is  left.  In  history  as  in  literature  the 
English  had  forgotten  their  past,  and  had  turned 
to  foreign  sources.  It  is  noteworthy  that  Shaks- 
pere,  who  borrowed  his  subjects  and  his  heroes 
sometimes  from  authentic  English  history,  some- 
times from  the  legendary  history  of  ancient  Brit- 
ain, Denmark,  and  Scotland,  as  in  Lear,  Hamlet, 
and  Macbeth,  ignores  the  Saxon  period  altogether. 
And  Spenser,  who  gives  in  his  second  book  of 
the  Faerie  Queene,  a  resume  of  the  reigns  of  fab- 
ulous British  kings  —  the  supposed  ancestors  of 
Queen  Elizabeth,  his  royal  patron — has  nothing  to 
say  of  the  real  kings  of  early  England.  So  com- 
pletely had  the  true  record  faded  away  that  it 
made  no  appeal  to  the  imaginations  of  our  most 
patriotic  poets.  The  Saxon  Alfred  had  been  de- 
throned by  the  British  Arthur,  and  the  conquered 
Welsh  had  imposed  their  fictitious  genealogies 
upon  the  dynasty  of  the  conquerors.  In  the 
Roman  de  Ron,  a  verse  chronicle  of  the  dukes  of 
Normandy,  written  by  the  Norman  Wace,  it  is 
related  that  at  the  battle  of  Hastings  the  French 
jongleur,  Taillefer,  spurred  out  before  the  van  of 
William's  army,  tossing  his  lance  in  the  air  and 
chanting  of  "  Charlemagne  and  of  Roland,  of 
Oliver  and  the  peers  who  died  at  Roncesvals." 
This  incident  is  prophetic  of  the  victory  which 
Norman  song,  no  less  than  Norman  arms,  was  to 
win  over  England.  The  lines  which  Taillefer 


FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER.         15 

sang  were  from  the  Chanson  de  Roland,  the  old- 
est and  best  of  the  French  hero  sagas.  The 
heathen  Northmen,  who  had  ravaged  the  coasts  of 
France  in  the  xoth  century,  had  become  in  the 
course  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  years,  completely 
identified  with  the  French.  They  had  accepted 
Christianity,  intermarried  with  the  native  women, 
and  forgotten  their  own  Norse  tongue.  The  race 
thus  formed  was  the  most  brilliant  in  Europe. 
The  warlike,  adventurous  spirit  of  the  vikings 
mingled  in  its  blood  with  the  French  nimbleness 
of  wit  and  fondness  for  display.  The  Normans 
were  a  nation  of  knights-errant,  with  a  passion  for 
prowess  and  for  courtesy.  Their  architecture  was 
at  once  strong  and  graceful.  Their  women  were 
skilled  in  embroidery,  a  splendid  sample  of  which 
is  preserved  in  the  famous  Bayeux  tapestry,  in 
which  the  conqueror's  wife,  Matilda,  and  the 
ladies  of  her  court  wrought  the  history  of  the 
Conquest. 

This  national  taste  for  decoration  expressed 
itself  not  only  in  the  ceremonious  pomp  of  feast 
and  chase  and  tourney,  but  likewise  in  literature. 
The  most  characteristic  contribution  of  the  Nor- 
mans to  English  poetry  were  the  metrical  romances 
or  chivalry  tales.  These  were  sung  or  recited  by 
the  minstrels,  who  were  among  the  retainers  of 
every  great  feudal  baron,  or  by  \\iQJ0ngleurs,  who 
wandered  from  court  to  castle.  There  is  a  whole 
literature  of  these  romans  (f  aventure  in  the  Anglo- 
Norman  dialect  of  French.  Many  of  them  are 


i6  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

very  long  —  often  thirty,  forty,  or  fifty  thousand 
lines — written  sometimes  in  a  strophic  form,  some- 
times in  long  Alexandrines,  but  commonly  in  the 
short,  eight-syllabled  rhyming  couplet.  Numbers 
of  them  were  turned  into  English  verse  in  the 
i3th,  i4th,  and  i5th  centuries.  The  translations 
were  usually  inferior  to  the  originals.  The  French 
trouvere  (finder  or  poet)  told  his  story  in  a  straight- 
forward, prosaic  fashion,  omitting  no  details  in 
the  action  and  unrolling  endless  descriptions  of 
dresses,  trappings,  gardens,  etc.  He  invented  plots 
and  situations  full  of  fine  possibilities  by  which  later 
poets  have  profited,  but  his  own  handling  of  them 
was  feeble  and  prolix.  Yet  there  was  a  simplicity 
about  the  old  French  language  and  a  certain  ele- 
gance and  delicacy  in  the  diction  of  the  trauveres 
which  the  rude,  unformed  English  failed  to  catch. 
The  heroes  of  these  romances  were  of  various 
climes:  Guy  of  Warwick,  and  Richard  the  Lion 
Heart  of  England,  Havelok  the  Dane,  Sir  Troi- 
lus  of  Troy,  Charlemagne,  and  Alexander.  But, 
strangely  enough,  the  favorite  hero  of  English 
romance  was  that  mythical  Arthur  of  Britain, 
whom  Welsh  legend  had  celebrated  as  the  most 
formidable  enemy  of  the  Sassenach  invaders  and 
their  victor  in  twelve  great  battles.  The  lan- 
guage and  literature  of  the  ancient  Cymry  or 
Welsh  had  made  no  impression  on  their  Anglo- 
Saxon  conquerors.  There  are  a  few  Welsh  borrow- 
ings in  the  English  speech,  such  z&bard  &&&druid ; 
but  iu  the  old  Anglo-Saxon  literature  there  are 


FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER.    17 

no  more  traces  of  British  song  and  story  than  if 
the  two  races  had  been  sundered  by  the  ocean 
instead  of  being  borderers  for  over  six  hundred 
years.  But  the  Welsh  had  their  own  national 
traditions,  and  after  the  Norman  Conquest  these 
were  set  free  from  the  isolation  of  their  Celtic 
tongue  and,  in  an  indirect  form,  entered  into  the 
general  literature  of  Europe.  The  French  came 
into  contact  with  the  old  British  literature  in  two 
places:  in  the  Welsh  marches  in  England  and  in 
the  province  of  Brittany  in  France,  where  the  popu- 
lation is  of  Cymric  race  and  spoke,  and  still  to  some 
extent  speaks,  a  Cymric  dialect  akin  to  the  Welsh. 
About  1140  Geoffrey  of  Monmouth,  a  Benedic- 
tine monk,  seemingly  of  Welsh  descent,  who  lived 
at  the  court  of  Henry  the  First  and  became  aft- 
erward bishop  of  St.  Asaph,  produced  in  Latin 
a  so-called  Historia  Britonum  in  which  it  was 
told  how  Brutus,  the  great  grandson  of  ^Eneas, 
came  to  Britain,  and  founded  there  his  kingdom 
called  after  him,  and  his  city  of  New  Troy 
(Troynovant)  on  the  site  of  the  later  London. 
An  air  of  historic  gravity  was  given  to  this  tissue 
of  Welsh  legends  by  an  exact  chronology  and  the 
genealogy  of  the  British  kings,  and  the  author 
referred,  as  his  authority,  to  an  imaginary  Welsh 
book  given  him,  as  he  said,  by  a  certain  Walter, 
archdeacon  of  Oxford.  Here  appeared  that  line 
of  fabulous  British  princes  which  has  become  so 
familiar  to  modern  readers  in  the  plays  of  Shaks- 
pere  and  the  poems  of  Tennyson  :  Lear  and  his 


i8  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

three  daughters ;  Cymbeline,  Gorboduc,  the  subject 
of  the  earliest  regular  English  tragedy,  composed 
by  Sackville  and  acted  in  1562  ;  Locrine  and  his 
Queen  Gwendolen,  and  his  daughter  Sabrina,  who 
gave  her  name  to  the  river  Severn,  was  made  im- 
mortal by  an  exquisite  song  in  Milton's  Cotnus, 
and  became  the  heroine  of  the  tragedy  of  Locrine, 
once  attributed  to  Shakspere ;  and  above  all,  Ar- 
thur, the  son  of  Uther  Pendragon,  and  the  founder 
of  the  Table  Round.  In  1155  Wace,  the  author 
of  the  Roman  de  Rou,  turned  Geoffrey's  work  in- 
to a  French  poem  entitled  Brut  d'  Angleterre, 
"  brut  "  being  a  Welsh  word  meaning  chronicle. 
About  the  year  1200  Wace's  poem  was  Englished 
by  Layamon,  a  priest  of  Arley  Regis,  on  the 
border  stream  of  Severn.  Layamon's  Brut  is  in 
thirty  thousand  lines,  partly  alliterative  and  partly 
rhymed,  but  written  in  pure  Saxon  English  with 
hardly  any  French  words.  The  style  is  rude  but 
vigorous,  and,  at  times,  highly  imaginative.  Wace 
had  amplified  Geoffrey's  chronicle  somewhat,  but 
Layamon  made  much  larger  additions,  derived, 
no  doubt,  from  legends  current  on  the  Welsh 
border.  In  particular  the  story  of  Arthur  grew 
in  his  hands  into  something  like  fullness.  He 
tells  of  the  enchantments  of  Merlin,  the  wizard; 
of  the  unfaithfulness  of  Arthur's  queen,  Guenever; 
and  the  treachery  of  his  nephew,  Modred.  His 
narration  of  the  last  great  battle  between  Arthur 
and  Modred  ;  of  the  wounding  of  the  king — "  fifteen 
fiendly  wounds  he  had,  one  might  in  the  least 


FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER.        19 

three  gloves  thrust — ";  and  of  the  little  boat  with 
"  two  women  therein,  vvonderly  dight,"  which 
came  to  bear  him  away  to  Avalun  and  the  Queen 
Argante,  "  sheenest  of  all  elves,"  whence  he  shall 
come  again,  according  to  Metlin's  prophecy,  to  rule 
the  Britons ;  all  this  left  little,  in  essentials,  for 
Tennyson  to  add  in  his  Death  of  Arthur.  This 
new  material  for  fiction  was  eagerly  seized  upon 
by  the  Norman  romancers.  The  story  of  Arthur 
drew  to  itself  other  stories  which  were  afloat. 
Walter  Map,  a  gentleman  of  the  Court  of  Henry 
II.,  in  two  French  prose  romances,  connected  with 
it  the  church  legend  of  the  Sangreal,  or  holy  cup, 
from  which  Christ  had  drunk  at  his  last  supper, 
and  which  Joseph  of  Arimathea  had  afterward 
brought  to  England.  Then  it  miraculously  dis- 
appeared and  became  thenceforth  the  occasion 
of  knightly  quest,  the  mystic  symbol  of  the  ob- 
ject of  the  soul's  desire,  an  adventure  only  to  be 
achieved  by  the  maiden  knight,  Galahad,  the  son 
of  the  great  Launcelot,  who  in  the  romances  had 
taken  the  place  of  Modred  in  Geoffrey's  history,  as 
the  paramour  of  Queen  Guenever.  In  like  man- 
ner the  love-story  of  Tristan  and  Isolde  was 
joined  by  other  romancers  to  the  Arthur-Saga. 
This  came  probably  from  Brittany  or  Cornwall. 
Thus  there  grew  up  a  great  epic  cycle  of  Ar- 
thurian romance,  with  a  fixed  shape  and  a  unity 
and  vitality  which  have  prolonged  it  to  our  own 
day  and  rendered  it  capable  of  a  deeper  and 
more  spiritual  treatment  and  a  more  artistic  hand- 


20  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

ling  by  such  modern  English  poets  as  Tennyson 
in  his  Idyls  of  the  King,  by  Matthew  Arnold, 
Swinburne,  and  many  others.  There  were  in- 
numerable Arthur  romances  in  prose  and  verse, 
in  Anglo-Norman  and  continental  French  dialects, 
in  English,  in  German,  and  in  other  tongues. 
But  the  final  form  which  the  Saga  took  in 
mediaeval  England  was  the  prose  Morte  Dartur 
of  Sir  Thomas  Malory,  composed  at  the  close  of 
the  i5th  century.  This  was  a  digest  of  the  earlier 
romances  and  is  Tennyson's  main  authority. 

Beside  the  literature  of  the  knight  was  the 
literature  of  the  cloister.  There  is  a  considerable 
body  of  religious  writing  in  early  English,  con- 
sisting of  homilies  in  prose  and  verse,  books  of 
devotion,  like  the  Ancren  Riwle  (Rule  of  An- 
choresses), 1225;  the  Ayenbite  of  Inwyt  (Remorse 
of  Conscience),  1340,  both  in  prose ;  the  Handlyng 
Sinne,  1303;  the  Cursor  Mundi,  1320;  and  the 
Pricke  of  Conscience,  1340,  in  verse;  metrical  ren- 
derings of  the  Psalter,  the  Pater  Noster,  the 
Creed,  and  the  Ten  Commandments,  the  Gospels 
for  the  Day,  such  as  the  Ormulum,  or  Book  of 
Orm,  1205  ;  legends  and  miracles  of  saints;  poems 
in  praise  of  virginity,  on  the  contempt  of  the 
world,  on  the  five  joys  of  the  Virgin,  the  five 
wounds  of  Christ,  the  eleven  pains  of  hell,  the 
seven  deadly  sins,  the  fifteen  tokens  of  the  coming 
judgment,  and  dialogues  between  the  soul  and  the 
body.  These  were  the  work  not  only  of  the 
monks,  but  also  of  the  begging  friars,  and  in 


FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER.        21 

smaller  part  of  the  secular  or  parish  clergy. 
They  are  full  of  the  ascetic  piety  and  supersti- 
tion of  the  Middle  Age,  the  childish  belief  in  the 
marvelous,  the  allegorical  interpretation  of  Script- 
ure texts,  the  grotesque  material  horrors  of  hell 
with  its  grisly  fiends,  the  vileness  of  the  human 
body  and  the  loathsome  details  of  its  corruption 
after  death.  Now  and  then  a  single  poem  rises 
above  the  tedious  and  hideous  barbarism  of  the 
general  level  of  this  monkish  literature,  either 
from  a  more  intensely  personal  feeling  in  the  poet, 
or  from  an  occasional  grace  or  beauty  in  his  verse. 
A  poem  so  distinguished  is,  for  example,  A  Luve 
Ron  (A  Love  Counsel)  by  the  Minorite  friar, 
Thomas  de  Hales,  one  stanza  of  which  recalls  the 
French  poet  Villon's  Balade  of  Dead  Ladies ',  with, 
its  refrain. 

"  Mais  ou  sont  les  neiges  d'antan?" 

"  Where  are  the  snows  of  yester  year? 
Where  is  Paris  and  Heleyne 

That  weren  so  bright  and  fair  of  blee  * 
Amadas,  Tristan,  and  Ideyne 

Yseude  and  alle  the.f 
Hector  with  his  sharpe  main, 

And  Caesar  rich  in  worldes  fee  ? 
They  beth  ygliden  out  of  the  reign  $ 

As  the  shaft  is  of  the  clee."  § 

A  few  early  English  poems  on  secular  subjects 
are  also  worthy  of  mention,  among  others,  The 
Owl  and  the  Nightingale,  generally  assigned  to 
the  reign  of  Henry  III.  (1216-1272),  an  Estrif, 

*  Hue.  f  Those.  \  Realm,  §  Bowstring. 


22  ENGL&H  LITERATURE. 

or  dispute,  in  which  the  owl  represents  the  ascetic 
and  the  nightingale  the  aesthetic  view  of  life. 
The  debate  is  conducted  with  much  animation  and 
a  spirited  use  of  proverbial  wisdom.  The  Land  of 
Cokaygne  is  an  amusing  little  poem  of  some  two 
hundred  lines,  belonging  to  the  class  of  fabliaux, 
short  humorous  tales  or  satirical  pieces  in  verse. 
It  describes  a  lubber-land,  or  fool's  paradise,  where 
the  geese  fly  down  all  roasted  on  the  spit,  bring- 
ing garlic  in  the  bills  for  their  dressing,  and  where 
there  is  a  nunnery  upon  a  river  of  sweet  milk,  and 
an  abbey  of  white  monks  and  gray,  whose  walls, 
like  the  hall  of  little  King  Pepin,  are  "  of  pie- 
crust and  pastry  crust,"  with  flouren  cakes  for 
the  shingles  and  fat  puddings  for  the  pins. 

There  are  a  few  songs  dating  from  about  1300, 
and  mostly  found  in  a  single  collection  (Had. 
MS.,  2253),  which  are  almost  the  only  English 
verse  before  Chaucer  that  has  any  sweetness  to 
a  modern  ear.  They  are  written  in  French 
strophic  forms  in  the  southern  dialect,  and  some- 
times have  an  intermixture  of  French  and  Latin 
lines.  They  are  musical,  fresh,  simple,  and  many 
of  them  very  pretty.  They  celebrate  the  gladness 
of  spring  with  its  cuckoos  and  throstle-cocks,  its 
daisies  and  woodruff. 

"When  the  nightingale  sings  the  woodes  waxen  green 
Leaf  and  grass  and  blossom  spring  in  Averil,  I  ween, 
And  love  is  to  my  herte  gone  with  a  spear  so  keen, 
Night  and  day  my  blood  it  drinks  my  herte  doth  me  tene.* 

*  Pain, 


FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER.        23 

Others  are  love  plaints  to  "  Alysoun  "  or  some 
other  lady  whose  "  name  is  in  a  note  of  the 
nightingale  ;  "  whose  eyes  are  as  gray  as  glass^ 
and  her  skin  as  "  red  as  rose  on  ris."  *  Some  em- 
ploy a  burden  or  refrain. 

"  Blow,  northern  wind, 

Blow  thou  me,  my  sweeting. 

Blow,  northern  wind,  blow,  blow,  blow  ! " 

Others  are  touched  with  a  light  melancholy  at  the 
coming  of  winter. 

"  Winter  wakeneth  all  my  care 

Now  these  leaves  waxeth  bare. 

Oft  I  sigh  and  mourne  sare 

When  it  cometh  in  my  thought 

Of  this  worldes  joy,  how  it  goeth  all  to  nought" 

Some  of  these  poems  are  love  songs  to  Christ  or 
the  Virgin,  composed  in  the  warm  language  of 
earthly  passion.  The  sentiment  of  chivalry  united 
with  the  ecstatic  reveries  of  the  cloister  had  pro- 
duced Mariolatry  and  the  imagery  of  the  Song  of 
Solomon,  in  which  Christ  wooes  the  soul,  had  made 
this  feeling  of  divine  love  familiar.  Toward  the 
end  of  the  ijth  century  a  collection  of  lives  of 
saints,  a  sort  of  English  Golden  Legend,  was  pre- 
pared at  the  great  abbey  of  Gloucester  for  use  on 
saints'  days.  The  legends  were  chosen  partly  from 
the  hagiology  of  the  Church  Catholic,  as  the  lives 
of  Margaret,  Christopher,  and  Michael;  partly 
from  the  calendar  of  the  English  Church,  as  the 

*  Branch. 


24  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

lives  of  St.  Thomas  of  Canterbury,  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxons,  Dunstan,  Swithin — who  is  mentioned  by 
Shakspere  —  and  Kenelm,  whose  life  is  quoted 
by  Chaucer  in  the  Nonne  Preste's  Tale.  The  verse 
was  clumsy  and  the  style  monotonous,  but  an  im- 
aginative touch  here  and  there  has  furnished  a 
hint  to  later  poets.  Thus  the  legend  of  St. 
Brandan's  search  for  the  earthly  paradise  has 
been  treated  by  Matthew  Arnold  and  William 
Morris. 

About  the  middle  of  the  i4th  century  there  was 
a  revival  of  the  Old  English  alliterative  verse  in 
romances  like  William  and  the  Werewolf,  and  Sir 
Gawayne,  and  in  religious  pieces  such  as  Clannesse 
(purity),  Patience  and  The  Perle,  the  last  named 
a  mystical  poem  of  much  beauty,  in  which  a  be- 
reaved father  sees  a  vision  of  his  daughter  among 
the  glorified.  Some  of  these  employed  rhyme  as 
well  as  alliteration.  They  are  in  the  West  Mid- 
land dialect,  although  Chaucer  implies  that  al- 
literation was  most  common  in  the  north.  "  I 
am  asotherne  man,"  says  the  parson  in  the  Canter- 
bury Tales.  "  I  cannot  geste  rom,  ram,  ruf,  by  my 
letter."  But  the  most  important  of  the  allitera- 
tive poems  was  the  Vision  of  William  concerning 
Piers  the  Plowman.  In  the  second  half  of  the 
i4th  century  French  had  ceased  to  be  the  mother- 
tongue  of  any  considerable  part  of  the  population 
of  England.  By  a  statute  of  Edward  III.,  in  1362, 
it  was  displaced  from  the  law  courts.  By  1386 
English  had  taken  its  place  in  the  schools.  The 


FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER.        25 

Anglo-Norman  dialect  had  grown  corrupt,  and 
Chaucer  contrasts  the  French  of  Paris  with  the 
provincial  French  spoken  by  his  prioress,  "  after 
the  scole  of  Stratford-atte-Bowe."  The  native 
English  genius  was  also  beginning  to  assert  itself, 
roused  in  part,  perhaps,  by  the  English  victories 
in  the  wars  of  Edward  III.  against  the  French. 
It  was  the  bows  of  the  English  yeomanry  that 
won  the  fight  at  Crecy,  fully  as  much  as  the  prow- 
ess of  the  Norman  baronage.  But  at  home  the 
times  were  bad.  Heavy  taxes  and  the  repeated 
visitations  of  the  pestilence,  or  Black  Death, 
pressed  upon  the  poor  and  wasted  the  land.  The 
Church  was  corrupt ;  the  mendicant  orders  had 
grown  enormously  wealthy,  and  the  country  was 
eaten  up  by  a  swarm  of  begging  friars,  pardoners, 
and  apparitors.  The  social  discontent  was  fer- 
menting among  the  lower  classes,  which  finally  is- 
sued in  the  communistic  uprising  of  the  peas- 
antry, under  Wat  Tyler  and  Jack  Straw.  This 
state  of  things  is  reflected  in  the  Vision  of  Piers 
Plowman,  written  as  early  as  1362,  by  William 
Langland,  a  tonsured  clerk  of  the  west  country. 
It  is  in  form  an  allegory,  and  bears  some  resem- 
blance to  the  later  and  more  famous  allegory  of 
the  Pilgrim's  Progress.  The  poet  falls  asleep  on 
the  Malvern  Hills,  in  Worcestershire,  and  has  a 
vision  of  a  "  fair  field  full  of  folk,"  representing 
the  world  with  its  various  conditions  of  men. 
There  were  pilgrims  and  palmers;  hermits  with 
hooked  staves,  who  went  to  Walsingham — and 


26  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

their  wenches  after  them — great  lubbers  and  long 
that  were  loth  to  work:  friars  glossing  the  Gospel 
for  their  own  profit ;  pardoners  cheating  the  peo- 
ple with  relics  and  indulgences;  parish  priests 
who  forsook  their  parishes — that  had  been  poor 
since  the  pestilence  time — and  went  to  London  to 
sing  there  for  simony;  bishops,  archbishops,  and 
deacons,  who  got  themselves  fat  clerkships  in  the 
Exchequer,  or  King's  Bench ;  in  short,  all  manner 
of  lazy  and  corrupt  ecclesiastics.  A  lady,  who  rep- 
resents holy  Church,  then  appears  to  the  dreamer, 
explains  to  him  the  meaning  of  his  vision,  and 
reads  him  a  sermon  the  text  of  which  is,  "  When 
all  treasure  is  tried,  truth  is  the  best."  A  number 
of  other  allegorical  figures  are  next  introduced, 
Conscience,  Reason,  Meed,  Simony,  Falsehood, 
etc.,  and  after  a  series  of  speeches  and  adventures, 
a  second  vision  begins  in  which  the  seven  deadly 
sins  pass  before  the  poet  in  a  succession  of  graphic 
impersonations,  and  finally  all  the  characters  set 
out  on  a  pilgrimage  in  search  of  St.  Truth,  finding 
no  guide  to  direct  them  save  Piers  the  Plowman, 
who  stands  for  the  simple,  pious  laboring  man,  the 
sound  heart  of  the  English  common  folk.  The 
poem  was  originally  in  eight  divisions  or  "  passus," 
to  which  was  added  a  continuation  in  three  parts? 
Vita  Do  Wei,  Do  Bet,  and  Do  Best.  About  1377 
the  whole  was  greatly  enlarged  by  the  author. 

Piers  Plmvman  was  the  first  extended  literary 
work  after  the  Conquest  which  was  purely  English 
in  character.  It  owed  nothing  to  France  but  the 


FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER.         27 

allegorical  cast  which  the  Roman  de  la  Rose  had 
made  fashionable  in  both  countries.  But  even 
here  such  personified  abstractions  as  Langland's 
Fair-speech  arid  Work-when-time-is,  remind  us  less 
of  the  Fraunchise,  Bel-amour,  and  Fals-semblaunt 
of  the  French  courtly  allegories  than  of  Bun- 
yan's  Mr.  Worldly  Wiseman,  and  even  of  such 
Puritan  names  as  Praise-God  Barebones,  and 
Zeal-of-the-land  Busy.  The  poem  is  full  of  En- 
glish moral  seriousness,  of  shrewd  humor,  the 
hatred  of  a  lie,  the  homely  English  love  for  reality. 
It  has  little  unity  of  plan,  but  is  rather  a  series  of 
episodes,  discourses,  parables,  and  scenes.  It  is 
all  astir  with  the  actual  life  of  the  time.  We  see 
the  gossips  gathered  in  the  ale-house  of  Betun  the 
brewster,  and  the  pastry  cooks  in  the  London 
streets  crying  "  Hote  pies,  hote  !  Good  gees  and 
grys.  Go  we  dine,  go  we !  "  Had  Langland  not 
linked  his  literary  fortunes  with  an  uncouth  and 
obsolescent  verse,  and  had  he  possessed  a  finer 
artistic  sense  and  a  higher  poetic  imagination,  his 
book  might  have  been,  like  Chaucer's,  among  the 
lasting  glories  of  our  tongue.  As  it  is,  it  is  for- 
gotten by  all  but  professional  students  of  literature 
and  history.  Its  popularity  in  its  own  day  is 
shown  by  the  number  of  MSS.  which  are  extant, 
and  by  imitations,  such  as  Piers  the  Plowman  s 
Crede  (1394),  and  the  Plowman's  Ta/e,  for  a  long 
time  wrongly  inserted  in  the  Canterbury  Tales. 
Piers  became  a  kind  of  typical  figure,  like  the 
French  peasant,  Jacques  Bonhomme,  and  was  ap- 


28  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

pealed  to  as  such  by  the  Protestant  reformers  of 
the  i6th  century. 

The  attack  upon  the  growing  corruptions  of  the 
Church  was  made  more  systematically,  and  from 
the  stand-point  of  a  theologian  rather  than  of  a 
popular  moralist  and  satirist,  by  John  Wiclif,  the 
rector  of  Lutterworth  and  professor  of  Divinity  in 
Baliol  College,  Oxford.  In  a  series  of  Latin  and 
English  tracts  he  made  war  against  indulgences, 
pilgrimages,  images,  oblations,  the  friars,  the  pope, 
and  the  doctrine  of  transubstantiation.  But  his 
greatest  service  to  England  was  his  translation 
of  the  Bible,  the  first  complete  version  in  the 
mother-tongue.  This  he  made  about  1380,  with 
the  help  of  Nicholas  Hereford,  and  a  revision  of  it 
was  made  by  another  disciple,  Purvey,  some  ten 
years  later.  There  was  no  knowledge  of  Hebrew 
or  Greek  in  England  at  that  time,  and  the  Wic- 
lifite  versions  were  made  not  from  the  original 
tongues,  but  from  the  Latin  Vulgate.  In  his  anx- 
iety to  makeTiis  rendering  close,  and  mindful,  per- 
haps, of  the  warning  in  the  Apocalypse,  "  If  any 
man  shall  take  away  from  the  words  of  the  book 
of  this  prophecy,  God  shall  take  away  his  part  out 
of  the  book  of  life,"  Wiclif  followed  the  Latin 
order  of  construction  so  literally  as  to  make  rather 
awkward  English,  translating,  for  example,  Quid 
sibi  vult  hoc  somnium  ?  by  What  to  itself  wole  this 
sweven  ?  Purvey's  revision  was  somewhat  freer 
and  more  idiomatic.  In  the  reigns  of  Henry  IV. 
and  V.  it  was  forbidden  to  read  or  to  have  any 


FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER.        29 

of  Wiclif 's  writings.  Such  of  them  as  could  be 
seized  were  publicly  burned.  In  spite  of  this,  copies 
of  his  Bible  circulated  secretly  in  great  numbers. 
Forshall  and  Madden,  in  their  great  edition  (1850), 
enumerate  one  hundred  and  fifty  MSS.  which  had 
been  consulted  by  them.  Later  translators,  like 
Tyndale  and  the  makers  of  the  Authorized  Version, 
or  "  King  James'  Bible  "  (1611),  followed  Wiclif 's 
language  in  many  instances;  so  that  he  was,  in 
truth,  the  first  author  of  our  biblical  dialect  and 
the  founder  of  that  great  monument  of  noble  En- 
glish which  has  been  the  main  conservative  in- 
fluence in  the  mother-tongue,  holding  it  fast  to 
many  strong,  pithy  words  and  idioms  that  would 
else  have  been  lost.  In  1415,  some  thirty  years 
after  Wiclif's  death,  by  decree  of  the  Council  of 
Constance,  his  bones  were  dug  up  from  the  soil  of 
Lutterworth  chancel  and  burned,  and  the  ashes  cast 
into  the  Swift.  "  The  brook,"  says  Thomas  Fuller, 
in  his  Church  History,  "did  convey  his  ashes  into 
Avon ;  Avon  into  Severn  ;  Severn  into  the  narrow 
seas  ;  they  into  the  main  ocean.  And  thus  the 
ashes  of  Wiclif  are  the  emblem  of  his  doctrine, 
which  now  is  dispersed  all  the  world  over." 

Although  the  writings  thus  far  mentioned  are 
of  very  high  interest  to  the  student  of  the  English 
language,  and  the  historian  of  English  manners 
and  culture,  they  cannot  be  said  to  have  much 
importance  as  mere  literature.  But  in  Geoffrey 
Chaucer  (died  1400)  we  meet  with  a  poet  of  the 
first  rank,  whose  works  are  increasingly  read  and 


3©  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

will  always  continue  to  be  a  source  of  delight  and 
refreshment  to  the  general  reader  as  well  as  a"  well 
of  English  undefiled  "  to  the  professional  man  of 
letters.  With  the  exception  of  Dante,  Chaucer 
was  the  greatest  of  the  poets  of  mediaeval  Europe, 
and  he  remains  one  of  the  greatest  of  English 
poets,  and  certainly  the  foremost  of  English  story- 
tellers in  verse.  He  was  the  son  of  a  London 
vintner,  and  was  in  his  youth  in  the  service  of 
Lionel,  Duke  of  Clarence,  one  of  the  sons  of  Ed- 
ward III.  He  made  a  campaign  in  France  in 
1359-60,  when  he  was  taken  prisoner.  Afterward 
he  was  attached  to  the  court  and  received  nu- 
merous favors  and  appointments.  He  was  sent 
on  several  diplomatic  missions  by  the  king,  three 
of  them  to  Italy,  where,  in  all  probability,  he  made 
the  acquaintance  of  the  new  Italian  literature,  the 
writings  of  Dante,  Petrarch,  and  Boccaccio.  He 
was  appointed  at  different  times  Comptroller  of 
the  Wool  Customs,  Comptroller  of  Petty  Customs, 
and  Clerk  of  the  Works.  He  sat  for  Kent  in  Par- 
liament, and  he  received  pensions  from  three  suc- 
cessive kings.  He  was  a  man  of  business  as  well 
as  books,  and  he  loved  men  and  nature  no  less 
than  study.  He  knew  his  world ;  he  "  saw  life 
steadily  and  saw  it  whole."  Living  at  the  center 
of  English  social  and  political  life,  and  resorting 
to  the  court  of  Edward  III.,  then  the  most  brill- 
iant in  Europe,  Chaucer  was  an  eye-witness  of 
those  feudal  pomps  which  fill  the  high-colored 
pages  of  his  contemporary,  the  French  chronicler, 


FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER.         31 

Froissart.  His  description  of  a  tournament  in  the 
Knight's  Tale  is  unexcelled  for  spirit  and  detail. 
He  was  familiar  with  dances,  feasts,  and  state 
ceremonies,  and  all  the  life  of  the  baronial  castle, 
in  bower  and  hall,  the  "  trompes  with  the  loude 
minstralcie,"  the  heralds,  the  ladies,  and  the 
squires, 

"  What  hawkes  sitten  on  the  perch  above, 
What  houndes  liggen  on  the  floor  adown." 

But  his  sympathy  reached  no  less  the  life  of  the 
lowly,  the  poor  widow  in  her  narrow  cottage,  and 
that  "trewe  swynkere  and  a  good,"  the  plowman 
whom  Langland  had  made  the  hero  of  his  vision. 
He  is,  more  than  all  English  poets,  the  poet  of  the 
lusty  spring,  of  "  Aprille  with  her  showres  sweet " 
and  the  "foules  song,"  of  "  May  with  all  her  floures 
and  her  greene,"  of  the  new  leaves  in  the  wood, 
and  the  meadows  new  powdered  with  the  daisy, 
the  mystic  Marguerite  of  his  Legend  of  Good 
Women.  A  fresh  vernal  air  blows  through  all  his 
pages. 

In  Chaucer's  earlier  works,  such  as  the  trans- 
lation of  the  Romaunt  of  the  Rose  (if  that  be 
his),  the  Boke  of  the  Duchesse,  the  Parlament  of 
Foules,  the  Hous  of  Fame,  as  well  as  in  the  Le- 
gend of  Good  Women,  which  was  later,  the  inspira- 
tion of  the  French  court  poetry  of  the  i3th  and 
i4th  centuries  is  manifest.  He  retains  in  them 
the  mediaeval  machinery  of  allegories  and 
dreams,  the  elaborate  descriptions  of  palaces, 


32  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

temples,  portraitures,  etc.,  which  had  been  made 
fashionable  in  France  by  such  poems  as  Guillaume 
de  Lorris's  Roman  de  la  Rose,  and  Jean  Machault's 
La  Fontaine  Amoureuse.  In  some  of  these  the 
influence  of  Italian  poetry  is  also  perceptible. 
There  are  suggestions  from  Dante,  for  example,  in 
the  Parlament  of  Foules  and  the  Hous  of  Fame, 
and  Troilus  and  Cresseide  is  a  free  handling  rather 
than  a  translation  of  Boccaccio's  Filostrato.  In  all 
of  these  there  are  passages  of  great  beauty  and 
force.  Had  Chaucer  written  nothing  else,  he 
would  still  have  been  remembered  as  the  most  ac- 
complished English  poet  of  his  time,  but  he  would 
not  have  risen  to  the  rank  which  he  now  occupies, 
as  one  of  the  greatest  English  poets  of  all  time. 
This  position  he  owes  to  his  masterpiece,  the 
Canterbury  Tales.  Here  he  abandoned  the  imita- 
tion of  foreign  models  and  the  artificial  literary 
fashions  of  his  age,  and  wrote  of  real  life  from  his 
own  ripe  knowledge  of  men  and  things. 

The  Canterbury  Tales  are  a  collection  of  stories 
written  at  different  times,  but  put  together,  prob- 
ably, toward  the  close  of  his  life.  The  frame-work 
into  which  they  are  fitted  is  one  of  the  happiest 
ever  devised.  A  number  of  pilgrims  who  are 
going  on  horseback  to  the  shrine  of  St.  Thomas 
a  Becket,  at  Canterbury,  meet  at  the  Tabard  Inn,  in 
Southwark,  a  suburb  of  London.  The  jolly  host 
of  the  Tabard,  Harry  Bailey,  proposes  that  on  their 
way  to  Canterbury,  each  of  the  company  shall  tell 
two  tales,  and  two  more  on  their  way  back,  and 


FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER.         33 

that  the  one  who  tells  the  best  shall  have  a  supper 
at  the  cost  of  the  rest  when  they  return  to  the 
inn.  He  himself  accompanies  them  as  judge  and 
"  reporter."  In  the  setting  of  the  stories  there  is 
thus  a  constant  feeling  of  movement  and  the  air 
of  all  outdoors.  The  little  "  head-links  "  and 
"  end-links  "  which  bind  them  together,  give  in- 
cidents of  the  journey  and  glimpses  of  the  talk  of 
the  pilgrims,  sometimes  amounting,  as  in  the  pro- 
logue of  the  Wife  of  £ath,  to  full  and  almost 
dramatic  character-sketches.  The  stories,  too,  are 
dramatically  suited  to  the  narrators.  The  general 
prologue  is  a  series  of  such  character-sketches, 
the  most  perfect  in  English  poetry.  The  por- 
traits of  the  pilgrims  are  illuminated  with  the  soft 
brilliancy  and  the  minute  loving  fidelity  of  the 
miniatures  in  the  old  missals,  and  with  the  same 
quaint  precision  in  traits  of  expression  and  in  cos- 
tume. The  pilgrims  are  not  all  such  as  one  would 
meet  nowadays  at  an  English  inn.  The  pres- 
ence of  a  knight,  a  squire,  a  yeoman  archer,  and 
especially  of  so  many  kinds  of  ecclesiastics,  a  nun, 
a  friar,  a  monk,  a  pardoner,  and  a  sompnour  or  ap- 
paritor, reminds  us  that  the  England  of  that  day 
must  have  been  less  like  Protestant  England,  as 
we  know  it,  than  like  the  Italy  of  some  thirty 
years  ago.  But  however  the  outward  face  of 
society  may  have  changed,  the  Canterbury  pil- 
grims remain,  in  Chaucer's  description,  living  and 
universal  types  of  human  nature.  The  Canterbury 
Tales  are  twenty-four  in  number.  There  were  thif  ty- 
3 


34  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

two  pilgrims,  so  that  if  finished  as  designed  the 
whole  collection  would  have  numbered  one  hun- 
dred and  twenty-eight  stories. 

Chaucer  is  the  bright  consummate  flower  of  the 
English  Middle  Age.  Like  many  another  great 
poet,  he  put  the  final  touch  to  the  various  literary 
forms  that  he  found  in  cultivation.  Thus  his 
Knight's  Tale,  based  upon  Boccaccio's  Teseide,  is 
the  best  of  English  mediaeval  romances.  And  yet 
the  Rime  of  Sir  Thopas,  who  goes  seeking  an 
elf  queen  for  his  mate,  and  is  encountered  by  the 
giant  Sir  Olifaunt,  burlesques  these  same  ro- 
mances with  their  impossible  adventures  and  their 
tedious  rambling  descriptions.  The  tales  of  the 
prioress  and  the  second  nun  are  saints'  legends. 
The  Monk's  Tale  is  a  set  of  dry,  moral  apologues 
in  the  manner  of  his  contemporary,  the  "  moral 
Gower."  The  stories  told  by  the  reeve,  mil- 
ler, friar,  sompnour,  shipman,  and  merchant,  be- 
long to  the  class  of  fabliaux,  a  few  of  which  ex- 
isted in  English,  such  as  Dame  Siriz,  the  Lay  of 
the  Ash,  and  the  Land  of  Cokaygne,  already  men- 
tioned. The  Nonne  Preste's  Tale,  likewise,  which 
Dryden  modernized  with  admirable  humor,  was  of 
the  class  of  fabliaux,  and  was  suggested  by  a  lit- 
tle poem  in  forty  lines,  Don  Coc  et  Werpil,  by 
Marie  de  France,  a  Norman  poetess  of  the  i3th 
century.  It  belonged,  like  the  early  English  poem 
of  The  Fox  and  the  Wolf,  to  the  popular  animal- 
*aga  of  Reynard  the  Fox.  The  Franklin  s  Tale, 
.vhcfse  scene  is  Brittany,  and  the  Wife  of  Baths' 


FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER.        35 

Tale,  which  is  laid  in  the  time  of  the  British  Ar- 
thur, belong  to  the  class  of  French  fat's,  serious  met- 
rical tales  shorter  than  the  romance  and  of  Breton 
origin,  the  best  representatives  of  which  are  the 
elegant  and  graceful  fat's  of  Marie  de  France. 

Chaucer  was  our  first  great  master  of  laughter 
and  of  tears.  His  serious  poetry  is  full  of  the 
tenderest  pathos.  His  loosest  tales  are  delight- 
fully humorous  and  life-like.  He  is  the  kindliest 
of  satirists.  The  knavery,  greed,  and  hypocrisy 
of  the  begging  friars  and  the  sellers  of  indul- 
gences are  exposed  by  him  as  pitilessly  as  by 
Langland  and  Wiclif,  though  his  mood  is  not  like 
theirs,  one  of  stern,  moral  indignation,  but  rather 
the  good-natured  scorn  of  a  man  of  the  world. 
His  charity  is  broad  enough  to  cover  even  the 
corrupt  sompnour  of  whom  he  says, 

"  And  yet  in  sooth  he  was  a  good  felawe." 

Whether  he  shared  Wiclif 's  opinions  is  unknown, 
but  John  of  Gaunt,  the  Duke  of  Lancaster  and 
father  of  Henry  IV.,  who  was  Chaucer's  life-long 
patron,  was  likewise  Wiclif 's  great  upholder 
against  the  persecution  of  the  bishops.  It  is,  per- 
haps, not  without  significance  that  the  poor  parson 
in  the  Canterbury  Tales,  the  only  one  of  his  eccle- 
siastical pilgrims  whom  Chaucer  treats  with  re- 
spect, is  suspected  by  the  host  of  the  Tabard  to  be 
a  "  loller,"  that  is,  a  Lollard,  or  disciple  of  Wiclif, 
and  that  because  he  objects  to  the  jovial  inn- 
keeper's swearing  "  by  Goddes  bones." 


36  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

Chaucer's  English  is  nearly  as  easy  for  a  mod- 
ern reader  as  Shakspere's,  and  few  of  his  words 
have  become  obsolete.  His  verse,  when  rightly 
read,  is  correct  and  melodious.  The  early  En- 
glish was,  in  some  respects,  more  "  sweet  upon 
the  tongue "  than  the  modern  language.  The 
vowels  had  their  broad  Italian  sounds,  and:  the 
speech  was  full  of  soft  gutturals  and  vocalic  sylla- 
bles, like  the  endings  en,  es,  and  e,  which  made 
feminine  rhymes  and  kept  the  consonants  from 
coming  harshly  together. 

Great  poet  as  Chaucer  was,  he  was  not  quite 
free  from  the  literary  weakness  of  his  time.  He 
relapses  sometimes  into  the  babbling  style  of  the 
old  chroniclers  and  legend  writers ;  cites  "  auc- 
tours  "  and  gives  long  catalogues  of  names  and 
objects  with  a  naive  display  of  learning;  and  in- 
troduces vulgar  details  in  his  most  exquisite  pas- 
sages. There  is  something  childish  about  almost 
all  the  thought  and  art  of  the  Middle  Ages — at 
least  outside  of  Italy,  where  classical  models  and 
traditions  never  quite  lost  their  hold.  But  Chau- 
cer's artlessness  is  half  the  secret  of  his  wonderful 
ease  in  story-telling,  and  is  so  engaging  that,  like 
a  child's  sweet  unconsciousness,  one  would  not 
wish  it  otherwise. 

The  Canterbury  Tales  had  shown  of  what  high 
uses  the  English  language  was  capable,  but  the 
curiously  trilingual  condition  of  literature  still 
continued.  French  was  spoken  in  the  proceed- 
ings of  Parliament  as  late  as  the  reign  of  Henry 


FROM  THE  CONQUEST  TO  CHAUCER.        37 

VI.  (1422-1471).  Chaucer's  contemporary,  John 
Gower,  wrote  his  Vox  Clamantis  in  Latin,  his 
Speculum  Meditantis  (a  lost  poem),  and  a  number 
of  ballades  in  Parisian  French,  and  his  Confessio 
Amantis  (1393)  in  English.  The  last  named  is  3 
dreary,  pedantic  work,  in  some  15,000  smooth, 
monotonous,  eight  -  syllabled  couplets,  in  which 
Grande  Amour  instructs  the  lover  how  to  get  the 
love  of  Bel  Pucell. 

1.  Early    English,  Literature.  By  Bernhard  ten 
Brink.  Translated  from  the  German  by  H.  M.  Ken- 
nedy.    New  York:  Henry  Holt  &  Co.,  1883. 

2.  Morris  and  Skeat's  Specimens  of  Early  En- 
glish.    (Clarendon  Press  Series.)     Oxford. 

3.  Langland's  Vision  of  William  concerning  Piers 
the    Plowman.    Wright's    Edition;    or    Skeat's,   in 
Early  English  Text  Society  publications. 

4.  Chaucer:  Canterbury  Tales.     Tyrwhitt's  Edi- 
tion; or  Wright's,  in  Percy  Society  publications. 

5.  Complete  Writings.     Morris's  Edition.    6  vols. 
(In  Aldine  Series.) 


CHAPTER  II. 

FROM  CHAUCER  TO  SPENSER. 
1400-1599, 

THE  i5th  century  was  a  barren  period  in  En- 
fish  literary  history.  It  was4  nearly  two  hundred 
years  after  Chaucer's  death  before  any  poet  came, 
whose  name  can  be  written  in  the  same  line  with 
his.  He  was  followed  at  once  by  a  number  of  imi- 
tators who  caught  the  trick  of  his  language  and 
verse,  but  lacked  the  genius  to  make  any  fine  use 
of  them.  The  manner  of  a  true  poet  may  be 
learned,  but  his  style,  in  the  high  sense  of  the  word, 
remains  his  own  secret.  Some  of  the  poems  which 
have  been  attributed  to  Chaucer  and  printed  in 
editions  of  his  works,  as  the  Court  of  Love,  the 
Flower  and  the  Leaf,  the  Cuckow  and  the  Nightin- 
gale, are  now  regarded  by  many  scholars  as  the 
work  of  later  writers.  If  not  Chaucer's,  they  are 
of  Chaucer's  school,  and  the  first  two,  at  least,  are 
very  pretty  poems  after  the  fashion  of  his  minor 
pieces,  such  as  the  Boke  of  the  Duchesse  and  the 
Parlament  of  Foules. 

Among  his  professed  disciples  was  Thomas  Oc- 
cleve,  a  dull  rhymer,  who,  in  his  Governail  of 
Princes,  a  didactic  poem  translated  from  the  Latin 


FROM  CHAUCER  TO  SPENSER.  39 

about  1413,  drew,  or  caused  to  be  drawn,  on  the 
margin  of  his  MS.  a  colored  portrait  of  his  "  mais- 
ter  dere  and  fader  reverent," 

"This  londes  verray  tresour  and  richesse, 
Dethe  by  thy  dethe  hath  harm  irreparable 
Unto  us  done  ;  hir  vengeable  duresse 
Dispoiled  hath  this  londe  of  the  swetnesse 
Of  Rhetoryk." 

Another  versifier  of  this  same  generation  was 
John  Lydgate,  a  Benedictine  monk,  of  the  Abbey 
of  Bury  St.  Edmunds,  in  Suffolk,  a  very  prolix 
writer,  who  composed,  among  other  things,  the 
Story  of  Thebes,  as  an  addition  to  the  Canterbury 
Tales.  His  ballad  of  London  Lyckpenny,  recount- 
ing the  adventures  of  a  countryman  who  goes  to 
the  law  courts  at  Westminster  in  search  of  justice, 

"  But  for  lack  of  mony  I  could  not  speede," 

is  of  interest  for  the  glimpse  that  it  gives  us  of 
London  street  life. 

Chaucer's  influence  wrought  more  fruitfully  in 
Scotland,  whither  it  was  carried  by  James  I., 
who  had  been  captured  by  the  English  when 
a  boy  of  eleven,  and  brought  up  at  Windsor  as 
a  prisoner  of  State.  There  he  wrote  during  the 
reign  of  Henry  V.  (1413-1422)  a  poem  in  six 
cantos,  entitled  the  King's  Quhair  (King's  Book), 
in  Chaucer's  seven  lined  stanza  which  had  been 
employed  by  Lydgate  in  his  Falls  of  Princes 
(from  Boccaccio),  and  which  was  afterward  called 


40  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

the  "rime  royal,"  from  its  use  by  King  James. 
The  King's  Quhair  tells  how  the  poet,  on  a  May 
morning,  looks  from  the  window  of  his  prison 
chamber  into  the  castle  garden  full  of  alleys,  haw- 
thorn hedges,  and  fair  arbors  set  with 

"  The  sharpe,  greene,  sweete  juniper." 

He  was  listening  to  "  the  little  sweete  nightingale," 
when  suddenly  casting  down  his  eyes  he  saw  a 
lady  walking  in  the  garden,  and  at  once  his  "  heart 
became  her  thrall."  The  incident  is  precisely 
like  Palamon's  first  sight  of  Emily  in  Chaucer's 
Knighfs  Tale,  and  almost  in  the  very  words  of 
Palamon,  the  poet  addresses  his  lady : 

"  Ah,  sweet,  are  ye  a  worldly  creature 

Or  heavenly  thing  in  likeness  of  nature  ? 

Or  are  ye  very  Nature,  the  goddess, 

That  have  depainted  with  your  heavenly  hand 

This  garden  full  of  flowres  as  they  stand  ?  " 

Then,  after  a  vision  in  the  taste  of  the  age,  in 
which  the  royal  prisoner  is  transported  in  turn  to 
the  courts  of  Venus,  Mincn>a,  and  Fortune,  and 
receives  their  instruction  in  the  duties  belong- 
ing to  Love's  service,  he  wakes  from  sleep  and  a 
white  turtle-dove  brings  to  his  window  a  spray  of 
red  gillyflowers,  whose  leaves  are  inscribed,  in  gold- 
en letters,  with  a  message  of  encouragement. 

James  I.  may  be"  reckoned  among  the  English 
poets.  He  mentions  Chaucer,  Gower,  and  Lyd- 
gate  as  his  masters.  His  education  was  English, 
and  so  was  the  dialect  of  his  poem,  although  the 


FROM  CHAUCER  TO  SPENSER.  41 

unique  MS.  of  it  is  in  the  Scotch  spelling.  The 
King's  Quhair  is  somewhat  overladen  with  orna- 
ment and  with  the  fashionable  allegorical  devices, 
but  it  is,  upon  the  whole,  a  rich  and  tender  love 
song,  the  best  specimen  of  court  poetry  between 
the  time  of  Chaucer  and  the  time  of  Spenser. 
The  lady  who  walked  in  the  garden  on  that  May 
morning  was  Jane  Beaufort,  niece  to  Henry  IV. 
She  was  married  to  her  poet  after  his  release  from 
captivity  and  became  Queen  of  Scotland  in  1424. 
Twelve  years  later  James  was  murdered  by  Sir 
Robert  Graham  and  his  Highlanders,  and  his  wife, 
who  strove  to  defend  him,  was  wounded  by  the 
assassins.  The  story  of  the  murder  has  been  told 
of  late  by  D.  G.  Rossetti,  in  his  ballad,  The  King's 
Tragedy. 

The  whole  life  of  this  princely  singer  was,  like 
his  poem,  in  the  very  spirit  of  romance. 

The  effect  of  all  this  imitation  of  Chaucer  was 
to  fix  a  standard  of  literary  style,  and  to  confirm 
the  authority  of  the  East-Midland  English  in 
which  he  had  written.  Though  the  poets  of  the 
i5th  century  were  not  overburdened  with  genius, 
they  had,  at  least,  a  definite  model  to  follow.  As 
in  the  i4th  century,  metrical  romances  continued 
to  be  translated  from  the  French,  homilies  and 
saints'  legends  and  rhyming  chronicles  were  still 
manufactured.  But  the  poems  of  Occleve  and 
Lydgate  and  James  I.  had  helped  to  polish  and 
refine  the  tongue  and  to  prolong  the  Chaucerian 
tradition.  The  literary  English  never  again  slipped 


42  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

back  into  the  chaos  of  dialects  which  had  pre- 
vailed before  Chaucer. 

In  the  history  of  every  literature  the  develop- 
ment of  prose  is  later  than  that  of  verse.  The 
latter  being,  by  its  very  form,  artificial,  is  cultivated 
as  a  fine  art,  and  its  records  preserved  in  an  early 
stage  of  society,  when  prose  is  simply  the  talk  of 
men,  and  not  thought  worthy  of  being  written  and 
kept.  English  prose  labored  under  the  added 
disadvantage  of  competing  with  Latin,  which  was 
the  cosmopolitan  tongue  and  the  medium  of  com- 
munication between  scholars  of  all  countries. 
Latin  was  the  language  of  the  Church,  and  in  the 
Middle  Ages  churchman  and  scholar  were  con- 
vertible terms.  The  word  clerk  meant  either  priest 
or  scholar.  Two  of  the  Canterbury  Tales  are  in 
prose,  as  is  also  the  Testament  of  Love,  formerly 
ascribed  to  Chaucer,  and  the  style  of  all  these  is  so 
feeble,  wandering,  and  unformed  that  it  is  hard  to 
believe  that  they  were  written  by  the  same  man 
who  wrote  the  Knight's  Tale  and  the  story  of 
Griselda.  The  Voiage  and  Travaile  of  Sir  John 
Maundeville — the  forerunner  of  that  great  library 
of  Oriental  travel  which  has  enriched  our  modern 
literature — was  written,  according  to  its  author, 
first  in  Latin,  then  in  French,  and,  lastly,  in  the 
year  1356,  translated  into  English  for  the  behoof 
of  "  lordes  and  knyghtes  and  othere  noble  and 
worthi  men,  that  conne  not  Latyn  but  litylle." 
The  author  professed  to  have  spent  over  thirty 
years  in  Eastern  travel,  to  have  penetrated  as  far 


FROM  CHAUCER  TO  SPENSER.  43 

as  Farther  India  and  the  "  iles  that  ben  abouten 
Indi,"  to  have  been  in  the  service  of  the  Sultan  of 
Babylon  in  his  wars  against  the  Bedouins,  and,  at 
another  time,  in  the  employ  of  the  Great  Khan  of 
Tartary.  But  there  is  no  copy  of  the  Latin  ver- 
sion of  his  travels  extant ;  the  French  seems  to  be 
much  later  than  1356,  and  the  English  MS.  to  be- 
long to  the  early  years  of  the  fifteenth  century,  and 
to  have  been  made  by  another  hand.  Recent  inves- 
tigations make  it  probable  that  Maundeville  bor- 
rowed his  descriptions  of  the  remoter  East  from 
many  sources,  and  particularly  from  the  narrative 
of  Odoric,  a  Minorite  friar  of  Lombardy,  who  wrote 
about  1330.  Some  doubt  is  even  cast  upon  the 
existence  of  any  such  person  as  Maundeville. 
Whoever  wrote  the  book  that  passes  under  his 
name,  however,  would  seem  to  have  visited  the 
Holy  Land,  and  the  part  of  the  "  voiage  "  that  de- 
scribes Palestine  and  the  Levant  is  fairly  close  to 
the  truth.  The  rest  of  the  work,  so  far  as  it  is  not 
taken  from  the  tales  of  other  travelers,  is  a  divert- 
ing tissue  of  fables  about  gryfouns  that  fly  away  with 
yokes  of  oxen,  tribes  of  one-legged  Ethiopians  who 
shelter  themselves  from  the  sun  by  using  their 
monstrous  feet  as  umbrellas,  etc. 

During  the  i5th  century  English  prose  was  grad- 
ually being  brought  into  a  shape  fitting  it  for  more 
serious  uses.  In  the  controversy  between  the 
Church  and  the  Lollards  Latin  was  still  mainly  em- 
ployed, but  Wiclif  had  written  some  of  his  tracts  in 
English,  and,  in  1449,  Reginald  Peacock,  Bishop  of 


44  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

St.  Asaph,  contributed,  in  English,  to  the  same  con- 
troversy, .7^  Represser  of  Overmuch  Blaming  of  the 
Clergy.  Sir  John  Fortescue,  who  was  chief-justice 
of  the  king's  bench  from  1442—1460,  wrote  during 
the  reign  of  Edward  IV.  a  book  on  the  Difference 
between  Absolute  and  Limited  Monarchy,  which  may 
be  regarded  as  the  first  treatise  on  political  philos- 
ophy and  constitutional  law  in  the  language.  But 
these  works  hardly  belong  to  pure  literature,  and 
are  remarkable  only  as  early,  though  not  very  good, 
examples  of  English  prose  in  a  barren  time.  The 
i5th  century  was  an  era  of  decay  and  change.  The 
Middle  Age  was  dying,  Church  and  State  were 
slowly  disintegrating  under  the  new  intellectual 
influences  that  were  working  secretly  under  ground. 
In  England  the  civil  wars  of  the  Red  and  White 
Roses  were  breaking  up  the  old  feudal  society  by 
decimating  and  impoverishing  the  baronage,  thus 
preparing  the  way  for  the  centralized  monarchy  of 
the  Tudors.  Toward  the  close  of  that  century,  and 
early  in  the  next,  happened  the  four  great  events, 
or  series  of  events,  which  freed  and  widened  men's 
minds,  and,  in  a  succession  of  shocks,  overthrew 
the  mediaeval  system  of  life  and  thought.  These 
were  the  invention  of  printing,  the  Renascence, 
or  revival  of  classical  learning,  the  discovery  of 
America,  and  the  Protestant  Reformation. 

William  Caxton,  the  first  English  printer,  learned 
the  art  in  Cologne.  In  1476  he  set  up  his  press 
and  sign,  a  red  pole,  in  the  Almonry  at  Westminster. 
Just  before  the  introduction  of  printing  the  demand 


FROM  CHAUCER  TO  SPENSER.  45 

for  MS.  copies  had  grown  very  active,  stimulated, 
perhaps,  by  the  coming  into  general  use  of  linen 
paper  instead  of  the  more  costly  parchment.  The 
scriptoria  of  the  monasteries  were  the  places  where 
the  transcribing  and  illuminating  of  MSS.  went  on, 
professional  copyists  resorting  to  Westminster 
Abbey,  for  example,  to  make  their  copies  of  books 
belonging  to  the  monastic  library.  Caxton's  choice 
of  a  spot  was,  therefore,  significant.  His  new  art 
for  multiplying' copies  began  to  supersede  the  old 
method  of  transcription  at  the  very  head-quarters 
of  the  MS.  makers.  The  first  book  that  bears  his 
Westminster  imprint  was  the  Dictes  and  Sayings  of 
the  Philosophers,  translated  from  the  French  by 
Anthony  Woodville,  Lord  Rivers,  a  brother-in-law 
of  Edward  IV.  The  list  of  books  printed  by 
Caxton  is  interesting,  as  showing  the  taste  of  the 
time,  as  he  naturally  selected  what  was  most  in  de- 
mand. The  list  shows  that  manuals  of  devotion 
and  chivalry  were  still  in  chief  request,  books 
like  the  Order  of  Chivalry,  Faits  of  Arms,  and 
the  Golden  Legend,  which  last  Caxton  translated 
himself,  as  well  as  Reynard  the  Fox,  and  a 
French  version  of  the  sEneid.  He  also  printed, 
with  continuations  of  his  own,  revisions  of  several 
early  chronicles,  and  editions  of  Chaucer,  Gower, 
and  Lydgate.  A  translation  of  Cicero  on  Friend- 
ship, made  directly  from  the  Latin,  by  Thomas 
Tiptoft,  Earl  of  Worcester,  was  printed  by  Caxton, 
but  no  edition  of  a  classical  author  in  the  original. 
The  new  learning  of  the  Renascence  had  not,  as 


46  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

yet,  taken  much  hold  in  England.  Upon  the 
whole,  the  productions  of  Caxton's  press  were 
mostly  of  a  kind  that  may  be  described  as  medi- 
aeval, and  the  most  important  of  them,  if  we  except 
his  edition  of  Chaucer,  was  that  "  noble  and  joy- 
ous book,"  as  Caxton  called  it,  Le  Morte  Dar- 
thur,  written  by  Sir  Thomas  Malory  in  1469,  and 
printed  by  Caxton  in  1485.  This  was  a  compila- 
tion from  French  Arthur  romances,  and  was  by  far 
the  best  English  prose  that  had  yet  been  written. 
It  may  be  doubted,  indeed,  whether,  for  purposes 
of  simple  story  telling,  the  picturesque  charm  of 
Malory's  style  has  been  improved  upon.  The 
episode  which  lends  its  name  to  the  whole  romance, 
the  death  of  Arthur,  is  most  impressively  told,  and 
Tennyson  has  followed  Malory's  narrative  closely, 
even  to  such  details  of  the  scene  as  the  little 
chapel  by  the  sea,  the  moonlight,  and  the  answer 
which  Sir  Bedwere  made  the  wounded  king,  when 
bidden  to  throw  Excalibur  into  the  water,  "'What 
saw  thou  there  ?  '  said  the  king.  '  Sir,"  he  said, '  I  saw 
nothing  but  the  waters  wap  and  the  waves  wan.'  " 

"  I  heard  the  ripple  washing  in  the  reeds 
And  the  wild  water  lapping  on  the  crag." 

And  very  touching  and  beautiful  is  the  oft-quoted 
lament  of  Sir  Ector  over  Launcelot,  in  Malory's 
rinal  chapter  :  "  'Ah,  Launcelot,'  he  said,  '  thou 
were  head  of  all  Christian  knights;  and  now  I  dare 
say,'  said  Sir  Ector, '  thou,  Sir  Launcelot,  there  thou 
liest,  that  thou  were  never  matched  of  earthly 


FROM  CHAUCER  TO  SPENSER.  47 

knight's  hand;  and  thou  were  the  courtiesl  knight 
that  ever  bare  shield ;  and  thou  were  the  truest 
friend  to  thy  lover  that  ever  bestrode  horse;  and 
thou  were  the  truest  lover  of  a  sinful  man  that  ever 
loved  woman  ;  and  thou  were  the  kindest  man  that 
ever  strake  with  sword ;  and  thou  were  the  good- 
liest person  ever  came  among  press  of  knights ; 
and  thou  were  the  meekest  man  and  the  gentlest 
that  ever  ate  in  hall  among  ladies;  and  thou  were 
the  sternest  knight  to  thy  mortal  foe  that  ever  put 
spear  in  the  rest."  " 

Equally  good,  as  an  example  of  English  prose 
narrative,  was  the  translation  made  by  John  Bour- 
chier,  Lord  Berners,  of  that  most  brilliant  of  the 
French  chroniclers,  Chaucer's  contemporary,  Sir 
John  Froissart.  Lord  Berners  was  the  English 
governor  of  Calais,  and  his  version  of  Froissart 's 
Chronicles  was  made  in  1523-25,  at  the  request  of 
Henry  VIII.  In  these  two  books  English  chivalry 
spoke  its  last  genuine  word.  In  Sir  Philip  Sidney 
the  character  of  the  knight  was  merged  into  that 
of  the  modern  gentleman.  And  although  tourna- 
ments were  still  held  in  the  reign  of  Elizabeth,  and 
Spenser  cast  his  Faery  Queene  into  the  form  of  a 
chivalry  romance,  these  were  but  a  ceremonial 
survival  and  literary  tradition  from  an  order  of 
things  that  had  passed  away.  How  antagonistic 
the  new  classical  culture  was  to  the  vanished  ideal 
of  the  Middle  Age  may  be  read  in  Toxophilus*  a 
treatise  on  archery  published  in  1545,  by  Roger 
Ascham,  a  Greek  lecturer  in  Cambridge,  and  the 


48  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

tutor  of  the  Princess  Elizabeth  and  of  Lady  Jane 
Grey.  "  In  our  forefathers'  time,  when  Papistry 
as  a  standing  pool  covered  and  overflowed  all  En- 
gland, few  books  were  read  in  our  tongue  saving 
certain  books  of  chivalry,  as  they  said,  for  pastime 
and  pleasure,  which,  as  some  say,  were  made  in 
'monasteries  by  idle  monks  or  wanton  canons :  as 
one,  for  example,  Morte  Arthure,  the  whole  pleas- 
ure of  which  book  standeth  in  two  special  points, 
in  open  manslaughter  and  bold  bawdry.  This  is 
good  stuff  for  wise  men  to  laugh  at  or  honest  men 
to  take  pleasure  at.  Yet  I  know  when  God's 
Bible  was  banished  the  Court,  and  Morte  Arthure 
received  into  the  prince's  chamber." 

The  fashionable  school  of  courtly  allegory,  first 
introduced  into  England  by  the  translation  of  the 
Romaunt  of  the  Rose,  reached  its  extremity  in  Ste- 
phen Hawes's  Passetyme  of  Pleasure,  printed  by 
Caxton's  successor,  Wynkyn  de  Worde,  in  1517. 
This  was  a  dreary  and  pedantic  poem,  in  which  it 
is  told  how  Graunde  Amoure,  after  a  long  series 
of  adventures  and  instructions  among  such  shad- 
owy personages  as  Verite,  Observaunce,  Falshed, 
and  Good  Operacion,  finally  won  the  love  of  La 
Belle  Pucel.  Hawes  was  the  last  English  poet  of 
note  whose  culture  was  exclusively  mediaeval.  His 
contemporary,  John  Skelton,  mingled  the  old 
fashions  with  the  new  classical  learning.  In  his 
Bmvge  of  Courte  (Court  Entertainment  or  Dole), 
and  in  others  of  his  earlier  pieces,  he  used,  like 
Hawes,  Chaucer's  seven-lined  stanza.  But  his  later 


FROM  CHAUCER  TO  SPENSER.  49 

poems  were  mostly  written  in  a  verse  of  his  own 
invention,  called  after  him  Skeltonical.  This  was 
a  sort  of  glorified  doggerel-,  in  short,  swift,  ragged 
lines,  with  occasional  intermixture  of  French  and 
Latin. 

"  Her  beautye  to  augment. 

Dame  Nature  hath  her  lent 

A  warte  upon  her  cheke, 

Who  so  lyst  to  seke 

In  her  vysage  a  skar, 

That  semyth  from  afar 

Lyke  to  the  radyant  star, 

All  with  favour  fret, 

So  properly  it  is  set. 

She  is  the  vyolet, 

The  daysy  delectable, 

The  columbine  commendable, 

The  jelofer  amyable ; 

For  this  most  goodly  floure, 

This  blossom  of  fressh  colour, 

So  Jupiter  me  succoiir, 

She  florysheth  new  and  new 

In  beaute  and  vertew  ; 

Hac  claritate  gemina, 

0  gloriosa  femina,  etc." 

Skclton  was  a  rude  railing  rhymer,  a  singular 
mixture  of  a  true  and  original  poet  with  a  buffoon ; 
coarse  as  Rabelais,  whimsical,  obscure,  but  always 
vivacious.  He  was  the  rector  of  Diss,  in  Norfolk, 
but  his  profane  and  scurrilous  wit  seems  rather 
out  of  keeping  with  his  clerical  character.  His 
Tunnyng  of  Elynoure  Rummyng  is  a  study  of  very 
low  life,  reminding  one  slightly  of  Burns's  Jolly 


50  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

Beggars.  His  Phyllyp  Sparowe  is  a  sportive, 
pretty,  fantastic  elegy  on  the  death  of  a  pet  bird 
belonging  to  Mistress  Joanna  Scroupe,  of  Carowe, 
and  has  been  compared  to  the  Latin  poet  Catul- 
lus's  elegy  on  Lesbia's  sparrow.  In  Speke,  Parrot, 
and  Why  Come  ye  not  to  Courtet  he  assailed  the 
powerful  Cardinal  Wolsey  with  the  most  ferocious 
satire,  and  was,  in  consequence,  obliged  to  take 
sanctuary  at  Westminster,  where  he  died  in  1529. 
Skelton  was  a  classical  scholar,  and  at  one  time 
tutor  to  Henry  VIII.  The  great  humanist,  Eras- 
mus, spoke  of  him  as  the  "  one  light  and  ornament 
of  British  letters."  Caxton  asserts  that  he  had 
read  Virgil,  Ovid,  and  Tully,  and  quaintly  adds, 
"  I  suppose  he  hath  dronken  of  Elycon's  well." 

In  refreshing  contrast  with  the  artificial  court 
poetry  of  the  i5th  and  first  three  quarters  of 
the  i6th  century,  was  the  folk-poetry,  the  popular 
ballad  literature  which  was  handed  down  by  oral 
tradition.  The  English  and  Scotch  ballads  were 
narrative  songs,  written  in  a  variety  of  meters,  but 
chiefly  in  what  is  known  as  the  ballad  stanza. 

"  In  somer,  when  the  shawes*  be  sheyne,  \ 

And  leves  be  large  and  longe, 
Hit  is  full  merry  in  feyre  forest 

To  here  the  foulys  song. 

"  To  se  the  dere  draw  to  the  dale, 

And  leve  the  hilles  hee,  \ 
And  shadow  them  in  the  leves  grene, 

Under  the  grene-wode  tree." 

*  Woods.  f  Bright.  \  High. 


FROM  CHAUCER  TO  SPENSER.  51 

It  is  not  possible  to  assign  a  definite  date  to  these 
ballads.  They  live^d  on  the  lips  of  the  people, 
and  were  seldom  reduced  to  writing  till  many 
years  after  they  were  first  composed  and  sung. 
Meanwhile  they  underwent  repeated  changes,  so 
that  we  have  numerous  versions  of  the  same  story. 
They  belonged  to  no  particular  author,  but,  like 
all  folk-lore,  were  handled  freely  by  the  unknown 
poets,  minstrels,  and  ballad  reciters,  who  modern- 
ized their  language,  added  to  them,  or  corrupted 
them,  and  passed  them  along.  Coming  out  of  an 
uncertain  past,  based  on  some  dark  legend  of 
heart-break  or  bloodshed,  they  bear  no  poet's  name, 
but  are  ferae  naturae,  and  have  the  flavor  of  wild 
game.  In  the  forms  in  which  they  are  preserved 
few  of  them  are  older  than  the  lyth  century,  or 
the  latter  part  of  the  i6th  century,  though  many,  in 
their  original  shape,  are,  doubtless,  much  older.  A 
very  few  of  the  Robin  Hood  ballads  go  back  to  the 
i5th  century,  and  to  the  same  period  is  assigned 
the  charming  ballad  of  the  Nut  Brown  Maid  and 
the  famous  border  ballad  of  Chevy  Chase,  which 
describes  a  battle  between  the  retainers  of  the 
two  great  houses  of  Douglas  and  Percy.  It  was 
this  song  of  which  Sir  Philip  Sidney  wrote,  "  I 
never  heard  the  old  song  of  Percy  and  Douglas 
but  I  found  myself  more  moved  than  by  a 
trumpet ;  and  yet  it  is  sung  but  by  some  blind 
crouder,*  with  no  rougher  voice  than  rude  style.'' 
But  the  style  of  the  ballads  was  not  always  rude. 
*  Fiddler. 


52  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

In  their  compressed  energy  of  expression,  in  the 
impassioned  abrupt,  yet  indirect  way  in  which 
they  tell  their  tale  of  grief  and  horror,  there  re- 
side often  a  tragic  power  and  art  superior  to  any 
English  poetry  that  had  been  written  since  Chau- 
cer, superior  even  to  Chaucer  in  the  quality  of 
intensity.  The  true  home  of  the  ballad  literature 
was  "  the  north  country,"  and  especially  the 
Scotch  border,  where  the  constant  forays  of  moss- 
troopers and  the  raids  and  private  warfare  of  the 
lords  of  the  marches  supplied  many  traditions  of 
heroism,  like  those  celebrated  in  the  old  poem  of 
the  Battle  of  Otterbourne,  and  in  the  Hunting  of 
the  Cheviot,  or  Chevy  Chase,  already  mentioned. 
Some  of  these  are  Scotch  and  others  English  ; 
the  dialect  of  Lowland  Scotland  did  not,  in  effect, 
differ  much  from  that  of  Northumberland  and 
Yorkshire,  both  descended  alike  from  the  old 
Northumbrian  of  Anglo-Saxon  times.  Other  bal- 
lads were  shortened,  popular  versions  of  the 
chivalry  romances  which  were  passing  out  of 
fashion  among  educated  readers  in  the  i6th  century, 
and  now  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  ballad  makers. 
Others  preserved  the  memory  of  local  country- 
side tales,  family  feuds,  and  tragic  incidents,  partly 
historical  and  partly  legendary,  associated  often 
with  particular  spots.  Such  are,  for  example, 
The  Dowie  Dens  of  Yarrow,  Pair  Helen  of  Kirk- 
connell,  The  Forsaken  Bride,  and  The  Twa  Cor- 
bies. Others,  again,  have  a  coloring  of  popular 
superstition,  like  the  beautiful  ballad  concerning 


FROM  CHAUCER  TO  SPENSZR.  53 

Thomas  of  Ersyldoune,  who  goes  in  at  Eldon  Hill 
with  an  Elf  queen  and  spends  seven  years  in  fairy 
land. 

But  the  most  popular  of  all  the  ballads  were  those 
which  cluster  about  the  name  of  that  good  outlaw, 
Robin  Hood,  who,  with  his  merry  men,  hunted  the 
forest  of  merry  Sherwood,  where  he  killed  the 
king's  deer  and  waylaid  rich  travelers,  but  was 
kind  to  poor  knights  and  honest  workmen.  Robin 
Hood  is  the  true  ballad  hero,  the  darling  of  the 
common  people,  as  Arthur  was  of  the  nobles.  The 
names  of  his  Confessor,  Friar  Tuck ;  his  mistress, 
Maid  Marian ;  his  companions,  Little  John, 
Scathelock,  and  Much,  the  Miller's  son,  were  as 
familiar  as  household  words.  Langland,  in  the 
I4th  century,  mentions  "  rimes  of  Robin  Hood," 
and  efforts  have  been  made  to  identify  him  with 
some  actual  personage,  as  with  one  of  the  dis- 
possessed barons  who  had  been  adherents  of 
Simon  de  Montfort  in  his  war  against  Henry  III. 
But  there  seems  to  be  nothing  historical  about 
Robin  Hood.  He  was  a  creation  of  the  popular 
fancy.  The  game  laws  under  the  Norman  kings  were 
very  oppressive,  and  there  were,  doubtless,  dim 
memories  still  cherished  among  the  Saxon  masses 
of  Hereward  and  Edric  the  Wild,  who  had  defied 
the  power  of  the  Conqueror,  as  well  as  of  later 
freebooters,  who  had  taken  to  the  woods  and  lived 
by  plunder.  Robin  Hood  was  a  thoroughly  na- 
tional character.  He  had  the  English  love  of  fair- 
play,  the  English  readiness  to  shake  hands  and 


54  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

make  up,  and  keep  no  malice  when  worsted  in" 
a  square  fight.  He  beat  and  plundered  the 
rich  bishops  and  abbots,  who  had  more  than 
their  share'  of  wealth,  but  he  was  generous  and 
hospitable  to  the  distressed,  and  lived  a  free 
and  careless  life  in  the  good  green  wood.  He 
was  a  mighty  archer,  with  those  national  weap- 
ons,, the  long-bow  and  the  cloth-yard-shaft.  He 
tricked  and  baffled  legal  authority  in  the  per- 
son of  the  proud  sheriff  of  Nottingham,  thereby 
appealing  to  that  secret  sympathy  with  lawless- 
ness and  adventure  which  marked  the  free-born, 
vigorous  yeomanry  of  England.  And  finally 
the  scenery  of  the  forest  gives  a  poetic  back- 
ground and  a  never-failing  charm  to  the  exploits 
of  "the  old  Robin  Hood  of  England"  and  his 
merry  men. 

The  ballads  came,  in  time,  to  have  certain 
tricks  of  style,  such  as  are  apt  to  character- 
ize a  body  of  anonymous  folk-poetry.  Such  is 
their  use  of  conventional  epithets  ;  "  the  red, 
red  gold,"  "  the  good,  green  wood,"  "  the  gray 
goose  wing."  Such  are  certain  recurring  terms 
of  phrase  like, 

"  But  out  and  spak  their  stepmother." 

Such  is,  finally,  a  kind  of  sing-song  repetition, 
which  doubtless  helped  the  ballad  singer  to  mem- 
orize his  stock,  as,  for  example, 

"  She  had'na  pu'd  a  double  rose, 
A  rose  but  only  twae." 


FROM  CHAUCER  TO  SPENSER.  55 

Or  again, 

' '  And  mony  ane  sings  o*  grass,  o*  grass, 

And  mony  ane  sings  o'  corn  ; 
An  mony  ane  sings  o'  Robin  Hood, 

Kens  little  whare  he  was  born. 

It  was  na  in  the  ha',  the  ha', 

Nor  in  the  painted  bower  ; 
But  it  was  in  the  gude  green  wood, 

Amang  the  lily  flower." 

Copies  of  some  of  these  old  ballads  were  hawked 
about  in  the  i6th  century,  printed  in  black  letter, 
"  broad  sides,"  or  single  sheets.  Wynkyn  de 
Worde  printed,  in  1489,  A  Lytell  Geste  of  Robin 
Hood,  which  is  a  sort  of  digest  of  earlier  ballads 
on  the  subject.  In  the  ryth  century  a  few  of  the 
English  popular  ballads  were  collected  in  mis- 
cellanies, called  Garlands.  Early  in  the  i8th  cent- 
ury the  Scotch  poet,  Allan  Ramsay,  published  a 
number  of  Scotch  ballads  in  the  Evergreen  and 
Tea-Table  Miscellany.  But  no  large  and  impor- 
tant collection  was  put  forth  until  Percy's  Rel- 
iques,  1765,  a  book  which  had  a  powerful  influence 
upon  Wordsworth  and  Walter  Scott.  In  Scotland 
some  excellent  ballads  in  the  ancient  manner  were 
written  in  the  i8th  century,  such  as  Jane  Elli- 
ott's Lament  for  Flodden,  and  the  fine  ballad  of 
Sir  Patrick  Spcnce.  Walter  Scott's  Proud  Maisie 
is  in  the  Wood,  is  a  perfect  reproduction  of  the 
pregnant,  indirect  method  of  the  old  ballad 
makers. 

In  1453  Constantinople  was  taken  by  the  Turks, 


56  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

and  many  Greek  scholars,  with  their  MSS.,  fled 
into  Italy,  where  they  began  teaching  their  lan- 
guage and  literature,  and  especially  the  philos- 
ophy of  Plato.  There  had  been  little  or  no 
knowledge  of  Greek  in  western  Europe  during 
the  Middle  Ages,  and  only  a  very  imperfect 
knowledge  of  the  Latin  classics.  Ovid  and 
Statius  were  widely  read,  and  so  was  the  late 
Latin  poet,  Boethius,  whose  De  Consolatione  Phil- 
osophies had  been  translated  into  English  by  King 
Alfred  and  by  Chaucer.  Little  was  known  of 
Vergil  at  first  hand,  and  he  was  popularly  sup- 
posed to  have  been  a  mighty  wizard,  who  made 
sundry  works  of  enchantment  at  Rome,  such  as 
a  magic  mirror  and  statue.  Caxton's  so-called 
translation  of  the  ^Eneid  was  in  reality  nothing  but 
a  version  of  a  French  romance  based  on  Vergil's 
epic.  Of  the  Roman  historians,  orators,  and  moral- 
ists, such  as  Livy,  Tacitus,  Caesar,  Cicero,  and  Sen- 
eca, there  was  an  almost  entire  ignorance,  as 
also  of  poets  like  Horace,  Lucretius,  Juvenal,  and 
Catullus.  The  gradual  rediscovery  of  the  re- 
mains of  ancient  art  and  literature  which  took 
place  in  the  i5th  century,  and  largely  in  Italy, 
worked  an  immense  revolution  in  the  mind  of 
Europe.  MSS.  were  brought  out  of  their  hiding 
places,  edited  by  scholars  and  spread  abroad  by 
means  of  the  printing-press.  Statues  were  dug 
up  and  placed  in  museums,  and  men  became  ac- 
quainted with  a  civilization  far  more  mature  tban 
that  of  the  Middle  Age,  and  with  models  of  perfect 


FROM  CHAUCER  TO  SPENSER.  57 

workmanship  in  letters  and  the  fine  arts.  In  the 
latter  years  of  the  i5th  century  a  number  of  En- 
glishmen learned  Greek  in  Italy  and  brought  it 
back  with  them  to  England.  William  Grocyn 
and  Thomas  Linacre,  who  had  studied  at  Florence 
under  the  refugee,  Demetrius  Chalcondylas,  be- 
gan teaching  Greek,  at  Oxford,  the  former  as  early 
as  1491.  A  little  later  John  Colet,  Dean  of  St. 
Paul's  and  the  founder  of  St.  Paul's  School,  and 
his  friend,  William  Lily,  the  grammarian  and  first 
master  of  St.  Paul's  (1500),  also  studied  Greek 
abroad,  Colet  in  Italy,  and  Lily  at  Rhodes  and  in 
the  city  of  Rome.  Thomas  More,  afterward  the 
famous  chancellor  of  Henry  VIII.,  was  among  the 
pupils  of  Grocyn  and  Linacre  at  Oxford.  Thither 
also,  in  1497,  came  in  search  of  the  new  knowl- 
edge, the  Dutchman,  Erasmus,  who  became  the 
foremost  scholar  of  his  time.  From  Oxford  the 
study  spread  to  the  sister  university,  where  the 
first  English  Grecian  of  his  day,  Sir  Jno.  Cheke, 
who  "  taught  Cambridge  and  King  Edward 
Greek,"  became  the  incumbent  of  the  new  pro- 
fessorship founded  about  1540.  Among  his  pupils 
was  Roger  Ascham,  already  mentioned,  in  whose 
time  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge,  was  the  chief 
seat  of  the  new  learning,  of  which  Thomas  Nashe 
testifies  that  it  "was  as  an  universitie  within  it- 
self; having  more  candles  light  in  it,  every  winter 
morning  before  four  of  the  clock,  than  the  four  of 
clock  bell  gave  strokes."  Greek  was  not  intro- 
duced at  the  universities  without  violent  opposi- 


58  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

tion  from  the  conservative  element,  who  were 
nicknamed  Trojans.  The  opposition  came  in  part 
from  the  priests,  who  feared  that  the  new  study 
would  sow  seeds  of  heresy.  Yet  many  of  the  most 
devout  churchmen  were  friends  of  a  more  liberal 
culture,  among  them  Thomas  More,  whose  Cathol- 
icism was  undoubted  and  who  went  to  the  block 
for  his  religion.  Cardinal  Wolsey,  whom  More  suc- 
ceeded as  chancellor,  was  also  a  munificent  patron 
of  learning  and  founded  Christ  Church  College,  at 
Oxford.  Popular  education  at  once  felt  the  impulse 
of  the  new  studies,  and  over  twenty  endowed  gram- 
mar schools  were  established  in  England  in  the  first 
twenty  years  of  the  i6th  century.  Greek  became  a 
passion  even  with  English  ladies.  Ascham  in  his 
Schoolmaster,  a  treatise  on  education,  published  in 
1570,  says,  that  Queen  Elisabeth  "readeth  here  now 
at  Windsor  more  Greek  every  day,  than  some  preb- 
endarie  of  this  Church  doth  read  Latin  in  a  whole 
week."  And  in  the  same  book  he  tells  how  call- 
ing once  upon  Lady  Jane  Grey,  at  Brodegate,  in 
Leicestershire,  he  "  found  her  in  her  chamber 
reading  Phadon  Platonis  in  Greek,  and  that  with 
as  much  delite  as  some  gentlemen  would  read  a 
merry  tale  in  Bocase,"  and  when  he  asked  her  why 
she  had  not  gone  hunting  with  the  rest,  she  an- 
swered, "  I  wisse,  all  their  sport  in  the  park  is  but 
a  shadow  to  that  pleasure  that  I  find  in  Plato." 
Ascham 's  Schoolmaster,  as  well  as  his  earlier  book, 
Toxophilns,  a  Platonic  dialogue  on  archery,  bristles 
with  quotations  from  the  Greek  and  Latin  clas- 


FROM  CHAUCER  TO  SPENSER.  59 

sics,  and  with  that  perpetual  reference  to  the  au- 
thority of  antiquity  on  every  topic  that  he  touches, 
which  remained  the  fashion  in  all  serious  prose 
down  to  the.  time  of  Dryden. 

One  speedy  result  of  the  new  learning  was  fresh 
translations  of  the  Scriptures  into  English,  out  of 
the  original  tongues.  In  1525  William  Tyndal 
printed  at  Cologne  and  Worms  his  version  of  the 
New  Testament  from  the  Greek.  Ten  years  later 
Miles  Coverdale  made,  at  Zurich,  a  translation  of 
the  whole  Bible  from  the  German  and  the  Latin. 
These  were  the  basis  of  numerous  later  transla- 
tions, and  the  strong  beautiful  English  of  Tyn- 
dal's  Testament  is  preserved  for  the  most  part  in 
our  Authorized  Version  (1611).  At  first  it  was 
not  safe  to  make  or  distribute  these  early  trans- 
lations in  England.  Numbers  of  copies  were 
brought  into  the  country,  however,  and  did  much 
to  promote  the  cause  of  the  Reformation.  After 
Henry  VIII.  had  broken  with  the  Pope  the  new 
English  Bible  circulated  freely  among  the  people. 
Tyndal  and  Sir  Thomas  More  carried  on  a  vigor- 
ous controversy  in  English  upon  some  of  the 
questions  at  issue  between  the  Church  and  the 
Protestants.  Other  important  contributions  to 
the  literature  of  the  Reformation  were  the  homely 
sermons  preached  at  Westminster  and  at  Paul's 
Cross  by  Bishop  Hugh  Latimer,  who  was  burned 
at  Oxford  in  the  reign  of  Bloody  Mary.  The 
English  Book  of  Common  Prayer  was  compiled  in 
1549-52.  More  was,  perhaps,  the  best  representa- 


6o  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

tive  of  a  group  of  scholars  who  wished  to  en- 
lighten and  reform  the  Church  from  inside,  but 
who  refused  to  follow  Henry  VIII.  in  his  breach 
with  Rome.  Dean  Colet  and  John  Fisher,  Bishop 
of  Rochester,  belonged  to  the  same  company, 
and  Fisher  was  beheaded  in  the  same  year  (1535) 
with  More,  and  for  the  same  offense,  namely,  re- 
fusing to  take  the  oath  to  maintain  the  act  con- 
firming the  king's  divorce  from  Catherine  of  Arra- 
gon  and  his  marriage  with  Anne  Boleyn.  More's 
philosophy  is  best  reflected  in  his  Utopia,  the  de- 
scription of  an  ideal  commonwealth,  modeled  on 
Plato's  Republic,  and  printed  in  1516.  The  name 
signifies  "  no  place  "  (OUTOTTOC),  and  has  furnished 
an  adjective  to  the  language.  The  Utopia  was  in 
Latin,  but  More's  History  of  Edward  V.  and 
Richard  III.,  written  in  1513,  though  not  printed 
till  1557,  was  in  English.  It  is  the  first  example 
in  the  tongue  of  a  history  as  distinguished  from  a 
chronicle;  that  is,  it  is  a  reasoned  and  artistic 
presentation  of  an  historic  period,  and  not  a  mere 
chronological  narrative  of  events. 

The  first  three  quarters  of  the  i6th  century 
produced  no  great  original  work  of  literature  in 
England.  It  was  a  season  of  preparation,  of 
education.  The  storms  of  the  Reformation  in- 
terrupted and  delayed  the  literary  renascence 
through  the  reigns  of  Henry  VIII.,  Edward  VI., 
and  Queen  Mary.  When  Elizabeth  came  to  the 
throne,  in  1558,  a  more  settled  order  of  things  be- 
gan, and  a  period  of  great  national  prosperity  and 


FROM  CHAUCER  TO  SPENSER.  61 

glory.  Meanwhile  the  English  mind  had  been 
slowly  assimilating  the  new  classical  culture, 
which  was  extended  to  all  classes  of  readers  by 
the  numerous  translations  of  Greek  and  Latin 
authors.  A  fresh  poetic  impulse  came  from  Italy. 
In  1557  appeared  Tottel 's  Miscellany,  containing 
songs  and  sonnets  by  a  "  new  company  of  courtly 
makers."  Most  of  the  pieces  in  the  volume  had 
been  written  years  before,  by  gentlemen  of  Henry 
VIII. 's  court,  and  circulated  in  MS.  The  two 
chief  contributors  were  Sir  Thomas  Wiat,  at  one 
time  English  embassador  to  Spain,  and  that  brill- 
iant noble,  Henry  Howard,  the  Earl  of  Surrey, 
who  was  beheaded  in  1547  for  quartering  the 
king's  arms  with  his  own.  Both  of  them  were  dead 
long  before  their  work  was  printed.  The  pieces 
in  Tottel's  Miscellany  show  very  clearly  the  in- 
fluence of  Italian  poetry.  We  have  seen  that 
Chaucer  took  subjects  and  something  more  from 
Boccaccio  and  Petrarch.  But  the  sonnet,  which 
Petrarch  had  brought  to  great  perfection,  was 
first  introduced  into  England  by  Wia.t.  There 
was  a  great  revival  of  sonneteering  in  Italy  in  the 
i6th  century,  and  a  number  of  Wiat's  poems  were 
adaptations  of  the  sonnets  and  canzoni  of  Pe- 
trarch and  later  poets.  Others  were  imitations  of 
Horace's  satires  and  epistles.  Surrey  introduced 
the  Italian  blank  verse  into  English  in  his  trans- 
lation of  two  books  of  the  JEneid.  The  love 
poetry  of  Tottel's  Miscellany  is  polished  and  artifi- 
cial, like  the  models  which  it  followed.  Dante's 


62  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

Beatrice  was  a  child,  and  so  was  Petrarch's  Laura. 
Following  their  example,  Surrey  addressed  his 
love  complaints,  by  way  of  compliment,  to  a  little 
girl  of  the  noble  Irish  family  of  Gtraldine.  The 
Amourists,  or  love  sonneters,  dwelt  on  the  meta- 
physics of  the  passion  with  a  tedious  minuteness, 
and  the  conventional  nature  of  their  sighs  and 
complaints  may  often  be  guessed  by  an  expe- 
rienced reader  from  the  titles  of  their  poems: 
"  Description  of  the  restless  state  of  a  lover,  with 
suit  to  his  lady  to  rue  on  his  dying  heart ;  "  "  Hell 
tormenteth  not  the  damned  ghosts  so  sore  as  un- 
kindness  the  lover;"  "The  lover  prayeth  not  to 
be  disdained,  refused,  mistrusted,  nor  forsaken," 
etc.  The  most  genuine  utterance  of  Surrey  was 
his  poem  written  while  imprisoned  in  Windsor — 
a  cage  where  so  many  a  song-bird  has  grown 
vocal.  And  Wiat's  little  piece  of  eight  lines,  "  Of 
his  Return  from  Spain,"  is  worth  reams  of  his 
amatory  affectations.  Nevertheless  the  writers  in 
Tottef s  Miscellany  were  real  reformers  of  English 
poetry.  They  introduced  new  models  of  style 
and  new  metrical  forms,  and  they  broke  away 
from  the  mediaeval 'traditions  which  had  hitherto 
obtained.  The  language  had  undergone  some 
changes  since  Chaucer's  time,  which  made  his 
scansion  obsolete,  The  accent  of  many  words 
of  French  origin,  like  nattire,  courage,  virtue, 
matere,  had  shifted  to  the  first  syllable,  and  the  e 
of  the  final  syllables  es,  en,  ed,  arid  e,  had  largely 
disappeared.  But  the  language  of  poetry  tends 


FROM  CHAUCER  TO  SPENSER.  63 

to  keep  up  archaisms  of  this  kind,  and  in  Stephen 
Hawes,  who  wrote  a  century  after  Chaucer,  we 
still  find  such  lines  as  these  : 

"  But  he  my  strokes  might  right  well  endure, 
He  was  so  great  and  huge  of  puissance."  * 

Hawes's  practice  is  variable  in  this  respect,  and  so 
is  his  contemporary,  Skelton's.  But  in  Wiat  and 
Surrey,  who  wrote  only  a  few  years  later,  the 
reader  first  feels  sure  that  he  is  reading  verse 
pronounced  quite  in  the  modern  fashion. 

But  Chaucer's  example  still  continued  potent. 
Spenser  revived  many  of  his  obsolete  words,  both 
in  his  pastorals  and  in  his  Faery  Queene,  thereby 
imparting  an  antique  remoteness  to  his  diction, 
but  incurring  Ben  Jonson's  censure,  that  he  "  writ 
no  language."  A  poem  that  stands  midway  be- 
tween Spenser  and  late  mediaeval  work  of  Chau- 
cer's school — such  as  Hawes 's  Passetyme  of  Pleas- 
ure— was  the  Induction  contributed  by  Thomas 
Sackville,  Lord  Buckhurst,  in  1563  to  a  collection 
of  narrative  poems  called  the  Mirrour  for  Magis- 
trates. The  whole  series  was  the  work  of  many 
hands,  modeled  upon  Lydgate's  Falls  of  Princes 
(taken  from  Boccaccio),  and  was  designed  as  a 
warning  to  great  men  of  the  fickleness  of  fortune. 
The  Induction  is  the  only  noteworthy  part  of  it. 
It  was  an  allegory,  written  in  Chaucer's  seven- 
lined  stanza  and  described  with  a  somber  im- 
aginative power,  the  figure  of  Sorrow,  her  abode 

*  Trisyllable — like  creature,  neighebour,  etCj  in  Chaucer. 


64  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

in  the  "  griesly  lake  "  of  Avernus  and  her  attend- 
ants, Remorse,  Dread,  Old  Age,  etc.  Sackville 
was  the  author  of  the  first  regular  English  tragedy, 
Gorboduc;  and  it  was  at  his  request  that  Ascham 
wrote  the  Schoolmaster. 

Italian  poetry  also  fed  the  genius  of  Edmund 
Spenser  (1552-99).  While  a  student  at  Pem- 
broke Hall,  Cambridge,  he  had  translated  some 
of  the  Visions  of  Petrarch^  and  the  Visions  of 
Bellay,  a  French  poet,  but  it  was  only  in  1579  that 
the  publication  of  his  Shepheartfs  Calendar  an- 
nounced the  coming  of  a  great  original  poet,  the 
first  since  Chaucer.  The  Shepheartfs  Calendar  was 
a  pastoral  in  twelve  eclogues  —  one  for  each 
month  in  the  year.  There  had  been  a  great  re- 
vival of  pastoral  poetry  in  Italy  and  France,  but, 
with  one  or  two  insignificant  exceptions,  Spenser's 
were  the  first  bucolics  in  English.  Two  of  his 
eclogues  were  paraphrases  from  Clement  Marot,  a 
French  Protestant  poet,  whose  psalms  were  greatly 
in  fashion  at  the  court  of  Francis  I.  The  pastoral 
machinery  had  been  used  by  Vergil  and  by  his 
modern  imitators,  not  merely  to  portray  the  loves 
of  Strephon  and  Chloe,  or  the  idyllic  charms  of 
rustic  life ;  but  also  as  a  vehicle  of  compliment, 
elegy,  satire,  and  personal  allusion  of  many  kinds. 
Spenser,  accordingly,  alluded  to  his  friends,  Sid- 
ney and  Harvey,  as  the  shepherds,  Astrophel  and 
Hobbinol,paid  court  to  Queen  Elizabeth  as  Cynthia, 
and  introduced,  in  the  form  of  anagrams,  names 
of  the  High-Church  Bishop  of  London,  Aylmer, 


FROM  CHAUCER  TO  SPENSER.  65 

and  the  Low-Church  Archbishop  Grindal.  The 
conventional  pastoral  is  a  somewhat  delicate 
exotic  in  English  poetry,  and  represents  a  very 
unreal  Arcadia.  Before  the  end  of  the  iyth 
century  the  squeak  of  the  oaten  pipe  had  become 
a  burden,  and  the  only  piece  of  the  kind  which  it 
is  easy  to  read  without  some  impatience  is  Mil- 
ton's wonderful  Lycidas.  The  Shepheard's  Cal- 
endar, however,  though  it  belonged  to  an  artificial 
order  of  literature,  had  the  unmistakable  stamp  of 
genius  in  its  style.  There  was  a  broad,  easy  mas- 
tery of  the  resources  of  language,  a  grace,  fluency, 
and  music  which  were  new  to  English  poetry.  It 
was  written  while  Spenser  was  in  service  with  the 
Earl  of  Leicester,  and  enjoying  the  friendship  of 
his  nephew,  the  all-accomplished  Sidney,  and  was, 
perhaps,  composed  at  the  latter's  country  seat  of 
Penshurst.  In  the  following  year  Spenser  went  to 
Ireland  as  private  secretary  to  Arthur  Lord  Grey 
of  Wilton,  who  had  just  been  appointed  Lord 
Deputy  of  that  kingdom.  After  filling  several 
clerkships  in  the  Irish  government,  Spenser  re- 
ceived a  grant  of  the  castle  and  estate  of  Kil- 
colman,  a  part  of  the  forfeited  lands  of  the  rebel 
Earl  of  Desmond.  Here,  among  landscapes  richly 
wooded,  like  the  scenery  of  his  own  fairy  land, 
"  under  the  cooly  shades  of  the  green  alders  by 
the  Mulla's  shore,"  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  found  him, 
in  1589,  busy  upon  his  Faery  Queene.  In  his  poem, 
Colin  Clout's  Come  Home  Again,  Spenser  tells,  in 
pastoral  language,  how  "  the  shepherd  of  the 


66  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

ocean  "  persuaded  him  to  go  to  London,  where  he 
presented  him  to  the  Queen,  under  whose  patron- 
age the  first  three  books  of  his  great  poem  were 
printed,  in  1590.  A  volume  of  minor  poems,  en- 
titled Complaints,  followed  in  1591,  and  the  three 
remaining  books  of  the  Faery  Queene  in  1596.  In 
1595-96  he  published  also  his  Daphnaida,  Protha- 
lamion,  and  the  four  hymns  On  Love  and  Beauty^ 
and  On  Heavenly  Love  and  Heavenly  Beauty.  In 
1598,  in  Tyrone's  rebellion,  Kilcolman  Castle  was 
sacked  and  burned,  and  Spenser,  with  his  family, 
fled  to  London,  where  he  died  in  January,  1599. 

The  Faery  Queene  reflects,  perhaps,  more  fully 
than  any  other  English  work,  the  many-sided 
literary  influences  of  the  renascence.  It  was  the 
blossom  of  a  richly  composite  culture.  Its  im- 
mediate models  were  Ariosto's  Orlando  Furioso, 
the  first  forty  cantos  of  which  were  published  in 
1515,  and  Tasso's  Gerusalemme  Liberata,  printed 
in  1581.  Both  of  these  were,  in  subject,  romances 
of  chivalry,  the  first  based  upon  the  old  Charle- 
magne epos  — Orlando  being  identical  with  the 
hero  of  the  French  Chanson  de  Roland — the 
second  upon  the  history  of  the  first  Crusade,  and 
the  recovery  of  the  Holy  City  from  the  Saracen. 
But  in  both  of  them  there  was  a  splendor  of  dic- 
tion and  a  wealth  of  coloring  quite  unknown  to 
the  rude  mediaeval  romances.  Ariosto  and  Tasso 
wrote  with  the  great  epics  of  Homer  and  Vergil 
constantly  in  mind,  and  all  about  them  was  the 
brilliant  light  of  Italian  art,  in  its  early  freshness 


FROM  CHAUCER  TO  SPENSER.  67 

and  power.  The  Faery  Queene,  too,  was  a  tale  of 
knight-errantry.  Its  hero  was  King  Arthur,  and 
its  pages  swarm  with  the  familiar  adventures  and 
figures  of  Gothic  romance  ;  distressed  ladies  and 
their  champions,  combats  with  dragons  and 
giants,  enchanted  castles,  magic  rings,  charmed 
wells,  forest  hermitages,  etc.  But  side  by  side 
with  tliese  appear  the  fictions  of  Greek  mythology 
and  the  personified  abstractions  of  fashionable 
allegory.  Knights,  squires,  wizards,  hamadryads, 
satyrs,  and  river  gods,  Idleness,  Gluttony,  and  Su- 
perstition jostle  each  other  in  Spenser's  fairy  land. 
Descents  to  the  infernal  shades,  in  the  manner  of 
Homer  and  Vergil,  alternate  with  descriptions  of 
the  Palace  of  Pride  in  the  manner  of  the  Romaunt 
of  the  Rose.  But  Spenser's  imagination  was  a 
powerful  spirit,  and  held  all  these  diverse  ele- 
ments in  solution.  He  removed  them  to  an  ideal 
sphere  "  apart  from  place,  withholding  time,"  where 
they  seem  all  alike  equally  real,  the  dateless  con- 
ceptions of  the  poet's  dream. 

The  poem  was  to  have  been  "  a  continued 
allegory  or  dark  conceit,"  in  twelve  books,  the 
hero  of  each  book  representing  one  of  the  twelve 
moral  virtues.  Only  six  books  and  the  fragment 
of  a  seventh  were  written.  By  way  of  compli- 
menting his  patrons  and  securing  contemporary 
interest,  Spenser  undertook  to  make  his  allegory 
a  double  one,  personal  and  historical,  as  well  as 
moral  or  abstract.  Thus  Gloriana,  the  Queen  of 
Faery,  stands  not  only  for  Glory  but  for  Elizabeth, 


68  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

to  whom  the  poem  was  dedicated.  Prince  Arthur 
is  Leicester,  as  well  as  Magnificence.  Duessa  is 
Falsehood,  but  also  Mary  Queen  of  Scots.  Gran- 
torto  is  Philip  II.  of  Spain.  Sir  Artegal  is  Jus- 
tice, but  likewise  he  is  Arthur  Grey  de  Wilton. 
Other  characters  shadow  forth  Sir  Walter  Raleigh, 
Sir  Philip  Sidney,  Henry  IV.  of  France,  etc. ;  and 
such  public  events  as  the  revolt  of  the  Spanish 
Netherlands,  the  Irish  rebellion,  the  execution  of 
Mary  Stuart,  and  the  rising  of  the  northern  Cath- 
olic houses  against  Elizabeth  are  told  in  parable. 
In  this  way  the  poem  reflects  the  spiritual  struggle 
of  the  time,  the  warfare  of  young  England  against 
Popery  and  Spain. 

The  allegory  is  not  always  easy  to  follow.  It 
is  kept  up  most  carefully  in  the  first  two  books, 
but  it  sat  rather  lightly  on  Spenser's  conscience, 
and  is  not  of  the  essence  of  the  poem.  It  is  an 
ornament  put  on  from  the  outside  and  detachable 
at  pleasure.  The  "  Spenserian  stanza,"  in  which 
the  Faery  Queene  was  written,  was  adapted  from 
the  ottava  rima  of  Ariosto.  Spenser  changed 
somewhat  the  order  of  the  rimes  in  the  first 
eight  lines  and  added  a  ninth  line  of  twelve  syl- 
lables, thus  affording  more  space  to  the  copious 
luxuriance  of  his  style  and  the  long-drawn  sweet- 
ness of  his  verse.  It  was  his  instinct  to  dilate  and 
elaborate  every  image  to  the  utmost,  and  his  sim- 
iles, especially — each  of  which  usually  fills  a  whole 
stanza — have  the  pictorial  amplitude  of  Homer's. 
Spenser  was,  in  fact,  a  great  painter.  His  poetry 


FROM  CHAUCER  TO  SPENSER.  69 

is  almost  purely  sensuous.  The  personages  in 
the  Faery  Queene  are  not  characters,  but  richly 
colored  figures,  moving  to  the  accompaniment  of 
delicious  music,  in  an  atmosphere  of  serene  re- 
moteness from  the  earth.  Charles  Lamb  said 
that  he  was  the  poet's  poet,  that  is,  he  appealed 
wholly  to  the  artistic  sense  and  to  the  love  of 
beauty.  Not  until  Keats  did  another  English 
poet  appear  so  filled  with  the  passion  for  all  out- 
ward shapes  of  beauty,  so  exquisitely  alive  to  all 
impressions  of  the  senses.  Spenser  was,  in  some 
respects,  more  an  Italian  than  an  English  poet. 
It  is  said  that  the  Venetian  gondoliers  still  sing 
the  stanzas  of  Tasso's  Gerusalemme  Liberata. 
It  is  not  easy  to  imagine  the  Thames  bargees 
chanting  passages  from  the  Faery  Queene.  Those 
English  poets  who  have  taken  strongest  hold 
upon  their  public  have  done  so  by  their  profound 
interpretation  of  our  common  life.  But  Spenser 
escaped  altogether  from  reality  into  a  region  of 
pure  imagination.  His  aerial  creations  resemble 
the  blossoms  of  the  epiphytic  orchids,  which  have 
no  root  in  the  soil,  but  draw  their  nourishment 
from  the  moisture  of  the  air. 

"  Their  birth  was  of  the  womb  of  morning  dew, 
And  their  conception  of  the  glorious  prime." 

Among  the  minor  poems  of  Spenser  the  most 
delightful  were  his  Prothalamion  and  Epithala- 
mion.  The  first  was  a  "  spousal  verse,"  made  for 
the  double  wedding  of  the  Ladies  Catherine  and 


70  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

Elizabeth  Somerset,  whom  the  poet  figures  as 
two  white  swans  that  come  swimming  down  the 
Thames,  whose  surface  the  nymphs  strew  with 
lilies,  till  it  appears  "like  a  bride's  chamber- 
floor." 

"  Sweet  Thames,  run  softly  till  I  end  my  song," 

is  the  burden  of  each  stanza.  The  Epithalamion 
was  Spenser's  own  marriage  song,  written  to 
crown  his  series  of  Amoretti,  or  love  sonnets,  and 
is  the  most  splendid  hyrnn  of  triumphant  love  in 
the  language.  Hardly  less  beautiful  than  these 
was  Muiopotrnos  j  or,  the  Fate  of  the  Butterfly,  an 
addition  to  the  classical  myth  of  Arachne,  the 
spider.  The  four  hymns  in  praise  of  Love  and 
Beauty,  Heavenly  Love  and  Heavenly  Beauty,  are 
also  stately  and  noble  poems,  but  by  reason  of 
their  abstractness  and  the  Platonic  mysticism 
which  they  express,  are  less  generally  pleasing 
than  the  others  mentioned.  Allegory  and  mys- 
ticism had  no  natural  affiliation  with  Spenser's 
genius.  He  was  a  seer  of  visions,  of  images  full, 
brilliant,  and  distinct,  and  not  like  Bunyan, 
Dante,  or  Hawthorne,  a  projector  into  bodily 
shapes  of  ideas,  typical  and  emblematic,  the 
shadows  which  haunt  the  conscience  and  the 
mind. 

1.  A  First   Sketch  of  English  Literature.     By 
Henry  Morley. 

2.  English  Writers.  By  the  same.  Vol.  iii.    From 
Chaucer  to  Dunbar. 


FROM  CHAUCER  TO  SPENSER.  71 

3.  Skeat's    Specimens    of    English   Literature, 
1394-1579.    Clarendon  Press  Series. 

4.  Morte  Darthur.     Globe  Edition. 

5.  Child's  English  and  Scottish  Ballads.    8  vols. 

6.  Hale's  edition  of  Spenser.     Globe. 

7.  "A  Royal  Poet."     Irving's  Sketch-Book. 


72  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 


CHAPTER  III. 

THE  AGE  OF  SHAKSPERE. 
1564-1616. 

THE  great  age  of  English  poetry  opened  with 
the  publication  of  Spenser's  Shepheard's  Calendar, 
in  1579,  and  closed  with  the  printing  of  Milton's 
Samson  Agonistes,  in  1671.  Within  this  period  of 
little  less  than  a  century  English  thought  passed 
through  many  changes,  and  there  were  several 
successive  phases  of  style  in  our  imaginative  liter- 
ature. Milton,  who  acknowledged  Spenser  as  his 
master,  and  who  was  a  boy  of  eight  years  at  Shaks- 
pere's  death,  lived  long  enough  to  witness  the 'es- 
tablishment of  an  entirely  new  school  of  poets,  in 
the  persons  of  Dryden  and  his  contemporaries. 
But,  roughly  speaking,  the  dates  above  given  mark 
the  limits  of  one  literary  epoch,  which  may  not 
improperly  be  called  the  Elisabethan.  In  strict- 
ness the  Elisabethan  age  ended  with  the  queen's 
death,  in  1603.  But  the  poets  of  the  succeeding 
reigns  inherited  much  of  the  glow  and  splendor 
which  marked  the  diction  of  their  forerunners; 
and  "  the  spacious  times  of  great  Elisabeth  "  have 
been,  by  courtesy,  prolonged  to  the  year  of  the 
Restoration  (1660).  There  is  a  certain  likeness 


THE  AGE  OF  SHAKSPERE.  73 

in  the  intellectual  products  of  the  whole  period,  a 
largeness  of  utterance,  and  a  high  imaginative  cast 
of  thought  which  stamp  them  all  alike  with  the 
queen's  seal. 

Nor  is  it  by  any  undue  stretch  of  the  royal 
prerogative  that  the  name  of  the  monarch  has 
attached  itself  to  the  literature  of  her  reign  and 
of  the  reigns  succeeding  hers.  Thje  expression 
"  Victorian  poetry  "  has  a  rather  absurd  sound 
when  one  considers  how  little  Victoria  counts  for 
in  the  literature  of  her  time.  But  in  Elisabethan 
poetry  the  maiden  queen  is  really  the  central 
figure.  She  is  Cynthia,  she  is  Thetis,  great  queen 
of  shepherds  and  of  the  sea;  she  is  Spenser's 
Gloriana,  and  even  Shakspere,  the  most  imper- 
sonal of  po.ets,  paid  tribute  to  her  in  Hetiry  VIII., 
and,  in  a  more  delicate  and  indirect  way,  in  the 
little  allegory  introduced  into  Midsummer  Nighfs 
Dream. 

"  That  very  time  I  marked — but  thou  could'st  not — 
Flying  between  the  cold  moon  and  the  earth, 
Cupid  all  armed.     A  certain  aim  he  took 
At  a  fair  vestal  throned  by  the  west, 
And  loosed  his  love-shaft  smartly  from  his  bow 
As  he  would  pierce  a  hundred  thousand  hearts. 
But  I  might  see  young  Cupid's  fiery  dart 
Quenched  in  the  chaste  beams  of  the  watery  moon, 
And  the  imperial  votaress  passed  on 
In  maiden  meditation,  fancy  free  " — 

an  allusion  to  Leicester's  unsuccessful  suit  for 
Elisabeth's  hand. 

The  praises  of  the  queen,  which  sound  through 


74  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

all  the  poetry  of  her  time,  seem  somewhat  overdone 
to  a  modern  reader.  But  they  were  not  merely 
the  insipid  language  of  courtly  compliment.  En- 
gland had  never  before  had  a  female  sovereign, 
except  in  the  instance  of  the  gloomy  and  bigoted 
Mary.  When  she  was  succeeded  by  her  more 
brilliant  sister,  the  gallantry  of  a  gallant  and  fan- 
tastic age  was  poured  at  the  latter's  feet,  the  senti- 
ment of  chivalry  mingling  itself  with  loyalty  to 
the  crown.  The  poets  idealized  Elisabeth.  She 
was  to  Spenser,  to  Sidney,  and  to  Raleigh,  not 
merely  a  woman  and  a  virgin  queen,  but  the 
champion  of  Protestantism,  the  lady  of  young  En- 
gland, the  heroine  of  the  conflict  against  popery 
and  Spain.  Moreover  Elisabeth  was  a  great 
woman.  In  spite  of  the  vanity,  caprice,  and  in- 
gratitude which  disfigured  her  character,  and  the 
vacillating,  tortuous  policy  which  often  distin- 
guished her  government,  she  was  at  bottom  a 
sovereign  of  large  views,  strong  will,  and  daunt- 
less courage.  Like  her  father,  she  " loved  a  man" 
and  she  had  the  magnificent  tastes  of  the  Tudors. 
She  was  a  patron  of  the  arts,  passionately  fond 
of  shows  and  spectacles,  and  sensible  to  poetic 
flattery.  In  her  royal  progresses  through  the 
kingdom,  the  universities  and  the  nobles  and  the 
cities  vied  with  one  another  in  receiving  her  with 
plays,  revels,  masques,  and  triumphs,  in  the  myth- 
ological taste  of  the  day.  "  When  the  queen  pa- 
raded through  a  country  town,"  says  Warton, 
the  historian  of  English  poetry,  "  almost  every 


THE  AGE  OF  SHAKSPERE.  75 

pageant  was  a. pantheon.  When  she  paid  a  visit 
at  the  house  of  any  of  her  nobility,  at  entering 
the  hall  she  was  saluted  by  the  Penates.  In  the 
afternoon,  when  she  condescended  to  walk  in  the 
garden,  the  lake  was  covered  with  tritons  and 
nereids ;  the  pages  of  the  family  were  converted 
into  wood-nymphs,  who  peeped  from  every  bower; 
and  the  footmen  gamboled  over  the  lawns  in  the 
figure  of  satyrs.  When  her  majesty  hunted  in 
the  park  she  was  met  by  Diana  who,  pronouncing 
our  royal  prude  to  be  the  brightest  paragon  of  un- 
spotted chastity,  invited  her  to  groves  free  from 
the  intrusions  of  Acteon."  The  most  elaborate 
of  these  entertainments  of  which  we  have  any 
notice,  were,  perhaps,  the  games  celebrated  in  her 
honor  by  the  Earl  of  Leicester,  when  she  visited 
him  at  Kenilworth,  in  1575.  An  account  of  these 
was  published  by  a  contemporary  poet,  George 
Gascoigne,  The  Princely  Pleasures  at  the  Court  of 
Kenilworth,  and  Walter  Scott  has  made  them 
familiar  to  modern  readers  in  his  novel  of  Kenil- 
worth. Sidney  was  present  on  this  occasion,  and, 
perhaps,  Shakspere,  then  a  boy  of  eleven,  and  liv- 
ing at  Stratford,  not  far  off,  may  have  been  taken 
to  see  the  spectacle,  may  have  seen  Neptune,  rid- 
ing on  the  back  of  a  huge  dolphin  in  the  castle 
lake,  speak  the  copy  of  verses  in  which  he  offered 
his  trident  to  the  empress  of  the  sea,  and  may  have 

"  heard  a  mermaid  on  a  dolphin's  back, 
Utter  such  dulcet  and  harmonious  breath, 
That  the  rude  sea  grew  civil  at  the  sound." 


76  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

But  in  considering  the  literature  of  Elisabeth's 
reign  it  will  be  convenient  to  speak  first  of  the 
prose.  While  following  up  Spenser's  career  to  its 
close  (1599),  we  have,  for  the  sake  of  unity  of 
treatment,  anticipated  somewhat  the  literary  his- 
tory of  the  twenty  years  preceding.  In  1579  ap- 
peared a  book  which  had  a  remarkable  influence 
on  English  prose.  This  was  John  Lyly's  Enphues, 
the  Anatomy  of  Wit.  It  was  in  form  a  romance, 
the  history  of  a  young  Athenian  who  went  to 
Naples  to  see  the  world  and  get  an  education  ; 
but  it  is  in  substance  nothing  but  a  series  of  dia- 
logues on  love,  friendship,  religion,  etc.,  written  in 
language  which,  from  the  title  of  the  book,  has 
received  the  name  of  Euphuism.  This  new  En- 
glish became  very  fashionable  among  the  ladies, 
and  "  that  beauty  in  court  which  could  not  parley 
Euphuism,"  says  a  writer  of  1632,  "was  as  little 
regarded  as  she  which  now  there  speaks  not 
French." 

Walter  Scott  introduced  a  Euphuist  into  his 
novel  the  Monastery^  but  the  peculiar  jargon  which 
Sir  Piercie  Shafton  is  made  to  talk  is  not  at 
all  like  the  real  Euphuism.  That  consisted  of 
antithesis,  alliteration,  and  the  profuse  illustration 
of  every  thought  by  metaphors  borrowed  from  a 
kind  of  fabulous  natural  history.  "  Descend  into 
thine  own  conscience  and  consider  with  thyself 
the  great  difference  between  staring  and  stark- 
blind,  wit  and  wisdom,  love  and  lust;  be  merry, 
but  with  modesty;  be  sober,  but  not  too  sullen; 


THE  AGE  OF  SHAKSPERE.  77 

be  valiant,  but  not  too  venturous."  "  I  see  now 
that,  as  the  fish  Scolopidus  in  the  flood  Araxes 
at  the  waxing  of  the  moon  is  as  white  as  the 
driven  snow,  and  at  the  waning  as  black  as  the 
burnt  coal;  so  Euphues,  which  at  the  first  increas- 
ing of  our  familiarity  was  very  zealous,  is  now  at 
the  last  cast  become  most  faithless."  Besides  the 
fish  Scolopidus,  the  favorite  animals  of  Lyly's 
menagerie  are  such  as  the  chameleon,  which, 
"  though  he  have  most  guts  draweth  least 
breath  ;  "  the  bird  Piralis,  "  which  sitting  upon 
white  cloth  is  white,  upon  green,  green  ;  "  and 
the  serpent  Porphiriusy  which,  "  though  he  be  full 
of  poison,  yet  having  no  teeth,  hurteth  none  but 
himself." 

Lyly's  style  was  pithy  and  sententious,  and  his 
Sentences  have  the  air  of  proverbs  or  epigrams. 
The  vice  of  Euphuism  was  its  monotony.  On 
every  page  of  the  book  there  was  something  pun- 
gent, something  quotable  ;  but  many  pages  of  such 
writing  became  tiresome.  Yet  it  did  much  to 
form  the  hitherto  loose  structure  of  English  prose, 
by  lending  it  point  and  polish.  His  carefully  bal- 
anced periods  were  valuable  lessons  in  rhetoric, 
and  his  book  became  a  manual  of  polite  conver- 
sation and  introduced  that  fashion  of  witty  rep- 
artee, which  is  evident  enough  in  Shakspere's 
comic  dialogue.  In  1580  appeared  the  second 
part,  Euphues  and  his  England,  and  six  editions  of 
the  whole  work  were  printed  before  1598.  Lyly 
had  many  imitators.  In  Stephen  Gosson's  Scfiool 


78  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

of  Abuse,  a  tract  directed  against  the  stage  and 
published  about  four  months  later  than  the  first 
part  of  Euphues,  the  language  is  distinctly  Eu- 
phuistic.  The  dramatist,  Robert  Green,  published, 
in  1587,  \\\s  Menaphon  .j  Camillas  Alarum  to  Slum- 
bering Euphues,  and  his  Eup  hues' s  Censure  to  Phi- 
lautus.  His  brother  dramatist,  Thomas  Lodge, 
published,  in  1590,  Rosalynde  :  Euphues' s  Golden 
Legacy,  from  which  Shakspere  took  the  plot  of  As 
You  Like  It.  Shakspere  and  Ben  Jonson  both 
quote  from  Euphues  in  their  plays,  and  Shakspere 
was  really  writing  Euphuism,  when  he  wrote  such 
a  sentence  as  "  'Tis  true,  'tis  pity ;  pity  'tis  tis 
true." 

That  knightly  gentleman,  Philip  Sidney,  was 
a  true  type  of  the  lofty  aspiration  and  mani- 
fold activity  of  Elizabethan  England.  He  was 
scholar,  poet,  courtier,  diplomatist,  statesman, 
soldier,  all  in  one.  Educated  at  Oxford  and  then 
introduced  at  court  by  his  uncle,  the  Earl  of  Leices- 
ter, he  had  been  sent  to  France  when  a  lad  of 
eighteen,  with  the  embassy  which  went  to  treat  of 
the  queen's  proposed  marriage  to  the  Duke  of 
Alencon,  and  was  in  Paris  at  the  time  of  the  Mas- 
sacre of  St.  Bartholomew,  in  1572.  Afterward  he 
had  traveled  through  Germany,  Italy,  and  the 
Netherlands,  had  gone  as  embassador  to  the  Em- 
peror's Court,  and  every-where  won  golden  opin- 
ions. In  1580,  while  visiting  his  sister  Mary, 
Countess  of  Pembroke,  at  Wilton,  he  wrote,  for  her 
pleasure,  the  Countess  of  Pembroke's  Arcadia,  which 


THE  AGE  OF  SHAKSPERE.  79 

remained  in  MS.  till  1590.  This  was  a  pastoral 
romance,  after  the  manner  of  the  Italian  Arcadia 
of  Sanazzaro,  and  the  Diana  Enamorada  of  Monte- 
mayor,  a  Portuguese  author.  It  was  in  prose,  but 
intermixed  with  songs  and  sonnets,  and  Sidney 
finished  only  two  books  and  a  portion  of  a  third. 
It  describes  the  adventures  of  two  cousins,  Musi- 
dorus  and  Pyrocles,  who  are  wrecked  on  the  coast 
of  Sparta.  The  plot  is  very  involved  and  is  full 
of  the  stock  episodes  of  romance :  disguises,  sur- 
prises, love  intrigues,  battles,  jousts  and  single 
combats.  Although  the  insurrection  of  the  Helots 
against  the  Spartans  forms  a  part  of  the  story, 
the  Arcadia  is  not  the  real  Arcadia  of  the  Hel- 
lenic Peloponnesus,  but  the  fanciful  country  of 
pastoral  romance,  an  unreal  clime,  like  the  Faery 
Land  of  Spenser. 

Sidney  was  our  first  writer  of  poetic  prose.    The 
poet  Drayton  says  that  he 

"  did  first  reduce 

Our  tongue  from  Lyly's  writing,  then  in  use, 
Talking  of  stones,  stars,  plants,  of  fishes,  flies, 
Playing  with  words  and  idle  similes." 

Sidney  was  certainly  no  Euphuist,  but  his  style 
was  as  "  Italianated  "  as  Lyly's,  though  in  a  dif- 
ferent way.  His  English  was  too  pretty  for  prose. 
His  "  Sidneian  showers  of  sweet  discourse  "  sowed 
every  page  of  the  Arcadia  with  those  flowers  of 
conceit,  those  sugared  fancies  which  his  contem- 
poraries loved,  but  which  the  taste  of  a  severer 


8o  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

age  finds  insipid.  This  splendid  vice  of  the 
Elisabethan  writers  appears  rn  Sidney,  chiefly  in 
the  form  of  an  excessive  personification.  If  he 
describes  a  field  full  of  roses,  he  makes  "  the  roses 
add  such  a  ruddy  show  unto  it,  as  though  the 
field  were  bashful  at  his  own  beauty."  If  he  de- 
scribes ladies  bathing  in  a  stream,  he  makes  the 
water  break  into  twenty  bubbles,  as  "  not  content 
to  have  the  picture  of  their  face  in  large  upon 
him,  but  he  would  in  each  of  those  bubbles  set 
forth  the  miniature  of  them."  And  even  a  pas- 
sage which  should  be  tragic,  such  as  the  death  of 
his  heroine,  Parthenia,  he  embroiders  with  con- 
ceits like  these  :  "  For  her  exceeding  fair  eyes 
having  with  continued  weeping  got  a  little  redness 
about  them,  her  round  sweetly  swelling  lips  a  lit- 
tle trembling,  as  though  they  kissed  their  neigh- 
bor Death ;  in  her  cheeks  the  whiteness  striving 
by  little  and  little  to  get  upon  the  rosiness  of 
them ;  her  neck,  a  neck  indeed  of  alabaster,  dis- 
playing the  wound  which  with  most  dainty  blood 
labored  to  drown  his  own  beauties;  so  as  here 
was  a  river  of  purest  red,  there  an  island  of  per- 
fectest  white,"  etc. 

The  Arcadia,  like  Euphues,  was  a  lady's  book. 
It  was  the  favorite  court  romance  of  its  day,  but 
it  surfeits  a  modern  reader  with  its  sweetness,  and 
confuses  him  with  its  tangle  of  adventures.  The 
lady  for  whom  it  was  written  was  the  mother  of 
that  William  Herbert,  Earl  of  Pembroke,  to  whom 
Shakspere's  sonnets  are  thought  to  have  been 


THE  AGE  OF  SHAKSPERE.  81 

dedicated.       And   she  was    the    subject   of  Ben 
Jonson's  famous  epitaph. 

41  Underneath  this  sable  herse 
Lies  the  subject  of  all  verse, 
Sidney's  sister,  Pembroke's  mother ; 
Death,  ere  thou  hast  slain  another 
Learn'd  and  fair  and  good  as  she, 
Time  shall  throw  a  dart  at  thee." 

Sidney's  Defense  of  Poesy,  composed  in  1581, 
but  not  printed  till  1595,  was  written  in  manlier 
English  than  ihe  Arcadia,  and  is  one  of  the  very 
few  books  of  criticism  belonging  to  a  creative  and 
uncritical  time.  He  was  also  the  author  of  a 
series  of  love  sonnets,  Astropkel  and  Stella,  in 
which  he  paid  Platonic  court  to  the  Lady  Penel- 
ope Rich  (with  whom  he  was  not  at  all  in  love), 
according  to  the  conventional  usage  of  the  amour- 
ists. 

Sidney  died  in  1586,  from  a  wound  received  in 
a  cavalry  charge  at  Zutphen,  where  he  was  an 
officer  in  the  English  contingent,  sent  to  help  the 
Dutch  against  Spain.  The  story  has  often  been 
told  of  his  giving  his  cup  of  water  to  a  wounded 
soldier  with  the  words,  "  Thy  necessity  is  yet 
greater  than  mine."  Sidney  was  England's  dar- 
ling, and  there  was  hardly  a  poet  in  the  land  from 
whom  his  death  did  not  obtain  "  the  meed  of  some 
melodious  tear."  Spenser's  Ruins  of  Time  were 
among  the  number  of  these  funeral  songs ;  but 
the  best  of  them  all  was  by  one  Matthew  Royden, 

concerning  whom  little  is  known. 
6 


82  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

Another  typical  Englishman  of  Elisabeth's  reign 
was  Walter  Raleigh,  who  was  even  more  versatile 
than  Sidney,  and  more  representative  of  the  rest- 
less spirit  of  romantic  adventure,  mixed  with  cool, 
practical  enterprise  that  marked  the  times.  He 
fought  against  the  Queen's  enemies  by  land  and 
sea  in  many  quarters  of  the  globe;  in  the  Nether- 
lands and  in  Ireland  against  Spain,  with  the 
Huguenot  Army  against  the  League  in  France. 
Raleigh  was  from  Devonshire,  the  great  nursery 
of  English  seamen.  He  was  half-brother  to  the 
famous  navigator,  Sir  Humphrey  Gilbert,  and 
cousin  to  another  great  captain,  Sir  Richard 
Grenville.  He  sailed  with  Gilbert  on  one  of  his 
voyages  against  the  Spanish  treasure  fleet,  and  in 
1591  he  published  a  report  of  the  fight,  near  the 
Azores,  between  Grenville's  ship,  the  Revenge, 
and  fifteen  great  ships  of  Spain,  an  action,  said 
Francis  Bacon,  "  memorable  even  beyond  credit, 
and  to  the  height  of  some  heroical  fable." 
Raleigh  was  active  in  raising  a  fleet  against  the 
Spanish  Armada  of  1588.  He  was  present  in. 

1596  at  the  brilliant  action  in  which  the  Earl  of 
Essex  "  singed  the  Spanish  king's  beard,"  in  the 
harbor  of  Cadiz.     The  year  before  he  had  sailed 
to  Guiana,  in  search  of  the  fabled  El  Dorado,  de- 
stroying on  the  way  the  Spanish  town  of  San  Jose, 
in  the  West  Indies ;   and  on  his  return   he  pub- 
lished his  Discovery  of  the  Empire  of  Guiana.     In 

1597  he    captured    the    town    of    Fayal,   in    the 
Azores.     He  took  a  prominent  part  in  colonizing 


THE  AGE  OF  SHAKSPERE.  83 

Virginia,  and  he  introduced  tobacco  and  the  potato 
plant  into  Europe. 

America  was  still  a  land  of  wonder  and  ro- 
mance, full  of  rumors,  nightmares,  and  .enchant- 
ments. In  1580,  when  Francis  Drake,  "the 
Devonshire  Skipper,"  had  dropped  anchor  in  Ply- 
mouth harbor,  after  his  voyage  around  the  world, 
the  enthusiasm  of  England  had  been  mightily 
stirred.  These  narratives  of  Raleigh,  and  the 
similar  accounts  of  the  exploits  of  the  bold  sail- 
ors, Davis,  Hawkins,  Frobisher,  Gilbert,  and 
Drake;  but  especially  the  great  cyclopedia  of 
nautical  travel,  published  by  Richard  Hakluyt,  in 
1589,  The  Principal  Navigations,  Voyages,  and  Dis- 
coveries made  by  the  English  Nation,  worked  power- 
fully on  the  imaginations  of  the  poets.  We  see 
the  influence  of  this  literature  of  travel  in  the 
Tempest,  written  undoubtedly  after  Shakspere  had 
been  reading  the  narrative  of  Sir  .George  Somers's 
shipwreck  on  the  Bermudas  or  "Isles  of  Devils." 

Raleigh  was  not  in  favor  with  Elizabeth's  suc- 
cessor, James  I.  He  was  sentenced,  to  death  on 
a  trumped-up  charge  of  high  treason.  The  sen- 
tence hung  over  him  until  1618,  when  it  was  re- 
vived against  him  and  he  was  beheaded.  Mean- 
while,, during  his  twelve  years'  imprisonment  in 
the  Tower,  he  had  written  his  magnum  opus,  the 
History  of  the  World.  This  is  not  a  history,  in  the 
modern  sense,  but  a  series  of  learned  dissertations 
on  law,  government,  theology,  magic,  war,  etc. 
A  chapter  with  such  a  caption  as  the  following 


84  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

would  hardly  be  found  in  a  universal  history  now- 
adays :  "  Of  their  opinion  which  make  Paradise 
as  high  as  the  moon  ;  and  of  others  which  make 
it  higher  than  the  middle  region  of  the^iir."  The 
preface  and  conclusion  are  noble  examples  of 
Elisabethan  prose,  and  the  book  ends  with  an  oft- 
quoted  apostrophe  to  Death.  "  O  eloquent,  just: 
and  mighty  Death!  Whom  none  could  advise, 
thou  has  persuaded ;  what  none  hath  dared,  thou 
hast  done ;  and  whom  all  the  world  hath  flattered, 
thou  only  hast  cast  out  of  the  world  and  despised ; 
thou  hast  drawn  together  all  the  far-fetched  great- 
ness, all  the  pride,  cruelty,  and  ambition  of  man, 
and  covered  it  all  over  with  these  two  narrow 
words,  hicjacet" 

Although  so  busy  a  man,  Raleigh  found  time  to 
be  a  poet.  Spenser  calls  him  "  the  summer's 
night  ingale,"and  George  Puttenham,  in  his  Art  of 
English  Poesy  (1589),  finds  his  "vein  most  lofty, 
insolent,  and  passionate."  Puttenham  used  in- 
solent in  its  old  sense,  uncommon  ;  but  this  descrip- 
tion is  hardly  less  true,  if  we  accept  the  word  in 
its  modern  meaning.  Raleigh's  most  notable 
verses,  The  Lie,  are  a  challenge  tq  the  world,  in- 
spired by  indignant  pride  and  the  weariness  of 
life  —  the  saeva  indignatio  of  Swift.  The  same 
grave  and  caustic  melancholy,  the  same  disillusion 
marks  his  quaint  poem,  The  Pilgrimage.  It  is  re- 
markable how  many  of  the  verses  among  his  few 
poetical  remains  are  asserted  in  the  MSS.  or  by 
tradition  to  have  been  "made  by  Sir  Walter 


THE  AGE  OF  SHAKSPERE.  85 

Raleigh  the  night  before  he  was  beheaded."  Of 
one  such  poem  the  assertion  is  probably  true, 
namely,  the  lines  "  found  in  his  Bible  in  the  gate- 
house at  Westminster." 

'•  Even  such  is  Time,  that  takes  in  trust, 
Our  youth,  our  joys,  our  all  we  have, 

And  pays  as  but  with  earth  and  dust ; 
Who  in  the  dark  and  silent  grave, 

When  we  have  wandered  all  our  ways, 

Shuts  up  the  story  of  our  days  ; 

But  from  this  earth,  this  grave,  this  dust, 

My  God  shall  raise  me  up,  I  trust !  " 

The  strictly  literary  prose  of  the  Elisabethan 
period  bore  a  small  proportion  to  the  verse. 
Many  entire  departments  of  prose  literature  were 
as  yet  undeveloped.  Fiction  was  represented — 
outside  of  the  Arcadia  and  Euphues  already  men- 
tioned—  chiefly  by  tales  translated  or  imitated 
from  Italian  novelle.  George  Turberville's  Trag- 
ical Tales  (1566)  was  a  collection  of  such  stories, 
and  William  Paynter's  Palace  of  Pleasure  (1576- 
15 7 7) 'a  similar  collection  from  Boccaccio's  De- 
cameron and  the  novels  of  Bandello.  These  trans- 
lations are  mainly  of  interest,  as  having  furnished 
plots  to  the  English  dramatists.  Lodge's  Rosalind 
and  Robert  Greene's  Pandosto,  the  sources  respect- 
ively of  Shakspere's  As  You  Like  It  and  Win- 
ter's Tate,  are  short  pastoral  romances,  not  with- 
out prettiness  in  their  artificial  way.  The  satirical 
pamphlets  of  Thomas  Nash  and  his  fellows,  against 
"  Martin  Marprelate,"  an  smonymous  writer,  oi 


86  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

company  of  writers,  who  attacked  the  bishops,  are 
not  wanting  in  wit,  but  are  so  cumbered  with  fan- 
tastic whimsicalities,  and  so  bound  up  with  per- 
sonal quarrels,  that  oblivion  has  covered  them.  The 
most  noteworthy  of  them  were  Nash's  Piers  Penni- 
less's  Supplication  to  the  Devil,  Lyly's  Pap  with  a 
Hatchet,  and  Greene's  Groats  Worth  of  Wit.  Of 
books  which  were  not  so  much  literature  as  the  ma- 
terial of  literature,  mention  may  be  made  of  the 
Chronicle  of  England,  compiled  by  Ralph  Holinshed 
in  1577.  This  was  Shakspere's  English  history,  and 
its  strong  Lancastrian  bias  influenced  Shakspere 
in  his  representation  of  Richard  III.  and  other 
characters  in  his  historical  plays.  In  his  Roman 
tragedies  Shakspere  followed  closely  Sir  Thomas 
North's  translation  of  Plutarch's  Lives,  made  in 
1579  from  the  French  version  of  Jacques  Amyot. 

Of  books  belonging  to  other  departments  than 
pure  literature,  the  most  important  was  Richard 
Hooker's  Ecclesiastical  Polity,  the  first  four  books 
of  which  appeared  in  1594.  This  was  a  work  on 
the  philosophy  of  law  and  a  defense,  as  against 
the  Presbyterians,  of  the  government  of  the  En- 
glish Church  by  bishops.  No  work  of  equal 
dignity  and  scope  had  yet  been  published  in  En- 
glish prose.  It  was  written  in  sonorous,  stately, 
and  somewhat  involved  periods,  in  a  Latin  rather 
than  an  English  idiom,  and  it  influenced  strongly 
the  diction  of  later  writers,  such  as  Milton  and  Sir 
Thomas  Browne.  Had  the  Ecclesiastical  Polity 
been  written  one  hundred,  or  perhaps  even  fifty, 


THE  AGE  OF  SHAKSPERE.  87 

years  earlier,  it  would  doubtless  have  been  written 
in  Latin. 

The  life  of  Francis  Bacon,  "  the  father  of  in- 
ductive philosophy,"  as  he  has  been  called — bet- 
ter, the  founder  of  inductive  logic — belongs  to  En- 
glish history,  and  the  bulk  of  his  writings,  in  Latin 
and  English,  to  the  history  of  English  philos- 
ophy. But  his  volume  of  Essays  was  a  contribution 
to  general  literature.  In  their  completed  form 
they  belong  to  the  year  1625,  but  the  first  edition 
was  printed  in  1597  and  contained  only  ten  short 
essays,  each  of  them  rather  a  string  of  pregnant 
maxims  —  the  text  for  an  essay  —  than  that  de- 
veloped treatment  of  a  subject  which  we  now  un- 
derstand by  the  word  essay.  They  were,  said 
their  author,  "  as  grains  of  salt  that  will  rather 
give  you  an  appetite  than  offend  you  with  satiety." 
They  were  the  first  essays  so-called  in  the  lan- 
guage. "  The  word,"  said  Bacon,  "  is  late,  but  the 
thing  is  ancient."  The  word  he  took  from  the 
French  essais  of  Montaigne,  the  first  two  books 
of  which  had  been  published  in  1592.  Bacon 
testified  that  his  essays  were  the  most  popular 
of  his  writings  because  they  "  came  home  to 
men's  business  and  bosoms."  Their  alternate  title 
explains  their  character :  Counsels  Civil  and 
Moral,  that  is,  pieces  of  advice  touching  the 
conduct  of  life,  "  of  a  nature  whereof  men  shall 
find  much  in  experience,  little  in  books."  The 
essays  contain  the  quintessence  of  Bacon's  prac- 
tical wisdom,  his  wide  knowledge  of  the  world  of 


88  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

men.  The  truth  and  depth  of  his  sayings,  and 
the  extent  of  ground  which  they  cover,  as  well  as 
the  weighty  compactness  of  his  style,  have  given 
many  of  them  the  currency  of  proverbs.  "  Re- 
venge is  a  kind  of  wild  justice."  "  He  that  hath 
wife  and  children  hath  given  hostages  to  fortune." 
"  There  is  no  excellent  beauty  that  hath  not  some 
strangeness  in  the  proportion."  Bacon's  reason 
was  illuminated  by  a  powerful  imagination,  and  his 
noble  English  rises  now  and  then,  as  in  his  essay 
On  Death,  into  eloquence — the  eloquence  of  pure 
thought,  touched  gravely  and  afar  off  by  emotion. 
In  general,  the  atmosphere  of  his  intellect  is  that 
lumen  siccum  which  he  loved  to  commend,  "  not 
drenched  or  bloodied  by  the  affections."  Dr. 
Johnson  said  that  the  wine  of  Bacon's  writings 
was  a  dry  wine. 

A  popular  class  of  books  in  the  iyth  century 
were  "  characters  "  or  "  witty  descriptions  of  the 
properties  of  sundry  persons,"  such  as  the  Good 
Schoolmaster,  the  Clown,  the  Country  Magistrate  ; 
much  as  in  some  modern  Heads  of  the  People^ 
where  Douglas  Jerrold  or  Leigh  Hunt  sketches 
the  Medical  Student,  the  Monthly  Nurse,  etc. 
A  still  more  modern  instance  of  the  kind  is 
George  Eliot's  Impressions  of  Theophrastus  Such, 
which  derives  its  title  from  the  Greek  philosopher, 
Theophrastus,  whose  character-sketches  were  the 
original  models  of  this  kind  of  literature.  The 
most  popular  character-book  in  Europe  in  the 
1 7th  century  was  La  Bruyere's  Caracftres.  But 


THE  AGE  OF  SHAKSPERE.  89 

this  was  not  published  till  1588.  In  England  the 
fashion  had  been  set  in  1614,  by  the  Characters  of 
Sir  Thomas  Overbury,  who  died  by  poison  the 
year  before  his  book  was  printed.  One  of  Over- 
bury's  sketches  —  the  Fair  and  Happy  Milk- 
maid—  is  justly  celebrated  for  its  old-world 
sweetness  and  quaintness.  "  Her  breath  is  her 
own,  which  scents  all  the  year  long  of  June,  like  a 
new-made  hay-cock.  She  makes  her  hand  hard 
with  labor,  and  her  heart  soft  with  pity;  and 
when  winter  evenings  fall  early,  sitting  at  her 
merry  wheel,  she  sings  defiance  to  the  giddy  wheel 
of  fortune.  She  bestows  her  year's  wages  at  next 
fair,  and,  in  choosing  her  garments,  counts  no 
bravery  in  the  world  like  decency.  The  garden 
and  bee-hive  are  all  her  physic  and  surgery,  and 
she  lives  the  longer  for  it.  She  dares  go  alone 
and  unfold  sheep  in  the  night,  and  fears  no  man- 
ner of  ill,  because  she  means  none;  yet  to  say 
truth,  she  is  never  alone,  but  is  still  accompanied 
with  old  songs,  honest  thoughts  and  prayers,  but 
short  ones.  Thus  lives  she,  and  all  her  care  is 
she  may  die  in  the  spring-time,  to  have  store  of 
flowers  stuck  upon  her  winding-sheet." 

England  was  still  merry  England  in  the  times 
of  good  Queen  Bess,  and  rang  with  old  songs, 
such  as  kept  this  milkmaid  company;  songs,  said 
Bishop  Joseph  Hall,  which  were  "  sung  to  the 
wheel  and  sung  unto  the  pail."  Shakspere  loved 
their  simple  minstrelsy;  he  put  some  of  them  into 
tne  mouth  of  Ophelia,  and  scattered  snatches  of 


90  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

them  through  his  plays,  and  wrote  others  like  them 
himself  : 

"  Now,  good  Cesario,  but  that  piece  of  song, 

That  old  and  antique  song  we  heard  la^t  night, 

Methinks  it  did  relieve  my  passion  much, 

More  than  light  airs  and  recollected  terms 

Of  these  most  brisk  and  giddy-paced  times. 

Mark  it,  Cesario,  it  is  old  and  plain. 

The  knitters  and  the  spinners  in  the  sun 

And  the  free  maids  that  weave  their  threads  with  bones 

Do  use  to  chant  it ;  it  is  silly  sooth 

And  dallies  with  the  innocence  of  love 

Like  the  old  age." 

Many  of  these  songs,  so  natural,  fresh,  and  spon- 
taneous, together  with  sonnets  and  other  more 
elaborate  forms  of  lyrical  verse,  were  printed  in 
miscellanies,  such  as  the  Passionate  Pilgrim,  En- 
gland's Helicon,  and  Davison's  Poetical  Rhapsody. 
Some  were  anonymous,  or  were  by  poets  of  whom 
little  more  is  known  than  their  names.  Others 
were  by  well-known  writers,  and  others,  again,  were 
strewn  through  the  plays  of  Lyly,  Shakspere,  Jon- 
son,  Beaumont,  Fletcher,  and  other  dramatists. 
Series  of  love  sonnets,  like  Spenser's  Amoretti  and 
Sidney's  Astrophd  and  Stella,  were  written  by 
Shakspere,  Daniel,  Drayton,  Drummond,  Con- 
stable, Watson,  and  others,  all  dedicated  to  some 
mistress  real  or  imaginary.  Pastorals,  too,  were 
written  in  great  number,  such  as  William  Browne's 
Britannia's  Pastorals  and  Shephera's  Pipe  (1613— 
1616)  and  Marlowe's  charmingly  rococo  little  idyl, 


THE  AGE  OF  SHAKSPERE.  91 

The  Passionate  Shepherd  to  his  Love,  which  Shaks- 
pere  quoted  in  the  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor,  and 
to  which  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  wrote  a  reply. 
There  were  love  stories  in  verse,  like  Arthur 
Brooke's  Romeo  and  Juliet  (the  source  of  Shaks- 
pere's  tragedy),  Marlowe's  fragment,  Hero  and 
Leander,  and  Shakspere's  Venus  and  Adonis,  and 
Rape  of  Lucrece,  the  first  of  these  on  an  Italian 
and  the  other  three  on  classical  subjects,  though 
handled  in  any  thing  but  a  classical  manner. 
Wordsworth  said  finely  of  Shakspere,  that  he 
"  could  not  have  written  an  epic :  he  would  have 
died  of  a  plethora  of  thought."  Shakspere's  two 
narrative  poems,  indeed,  are  by  no  means  models 
of  their  kind.  The  current  of  the  story  is  choked 
at  every  turn,  though  it  be  with  golden  sand.  It 
is  significant  of  his  dramatic  habit  of  mind  that 
dialogue  and^oliloquy  usurp  the  place  of  narration, 
and  that,  in  the  Rape  of  Lucrece  especially,  the 
poet  lingers  over  the  analysis  of  motives  and  feel- 
ings, instead  of  hastening  on  with  the  action,  as 
Chaucer,  or  any  born  story-teller,  would  have 
done. 

In  Marlowe's  poem  there  is  the  same  spend- 
thrift fancy,  although  not  the  same  subtlety.  In  the 
first  two  divisions  of  the  poem  the  story  does,  in 
some  sort,  get  forward  ;  but  in  the  continuation,  by 
George  Chapman  (who  wrote  the  last  four  "  ses- 
tiads  "),  the  path  is  utterly  lost,  "  with  woodbine 
and  the  gadding  vine  o'ergrown." 

One  is  reminded  that  modern  poetry,  if  it  has 


92  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

lost  in  richness,  has  gained  in  directness,  when  one 
compares  any  passage  in  Marlowe  and  Chapman's 
Hero  and  Leander  with  Byron's  ringing  lines : 

"  The  wind  is  high  on  Helle's  wave, 
As  on  that  night  of  stormy  water, 
When  Love,  who  sent,  forgot  to  save 
The  young,  the  beautiful,  the  brave, 
The  lonely  hope  of  Sestos'  daughter." 

Marlowe's  continuator,  Chapman,  wrote  a  number 
of  plays,  but  he  is  best  remembered  by  his  royal 
translation  of  Homer,  issued  in  parts  from  1598- 
1615.  This  was  not  so  much  a  literal  translation 
of  the  Greek,  as  a  great  Elisabethan  poem,  inspired 
by  Homer.  It  has  Homer's  fire,  but  not  his  sim- 
plicity; the  energy -of  Chapman's  fancy  kindling 
him  to  run  beyond  his  text  into  all  manner  of 
figures  and  conceits.  It  was  written,  as  has  been 
said,  as  Homer  would  have  written  if  he  had  been 
an  Englishman  of  Chapman's  time.  Certainly 
all  later  versions — Pope's  and  Cowper's  and  Lord 
Derby's  and  Bryant's  —  seem  pale  against  the 
glowing  exuberance  of  Chapman's  English.  His 
verse  was  not  the  heroic  line  of  ten  syllables, 
chosen  by  most  of  the  standard  translators,  but  the 
long  fourteen-syllabled  measure,  which  degenerates 
easily  into  sing-song  in  the  hands  of  a  feeble 
metrist.  In  Chapman  it  is  often  harsh,  but  sel- 
dom tame,  and  in  many  passages  it  reproduces 
wonderfully  the  ocean-like  roll  of  Homer's  hex- 
ameters. 


THE  AGE  OF  SHAKSPERE.  93 

"  From  his  bright  helm  and  shield  did  bum  a  most  unwearied 

fire, 
Like    rich    Autumnus'  golden  lamp,  whose  brightness  men 

admire, 

Past  all  the  other  host  of  stars  when,  with  his  cheerful  face, 
Fresh  washed  in  lofty  ocean  waves,  he  doth  the  sky  enchase." 

Keats's  fine  ode,  On  First  Looking  into  Chapman  s 
Homer,  is  well-known.  Fairfax's  version  of  Tas- 
so's  Jerusalem  Delivered  (1600)  is  one  of  the  best 
metrical  translations  in  the  language. 

The  national  pride  in  the  achievements  of  En- 
glishmen, by  land  and  sea,  found  expression,  not 
only  in  prose  chronicles  and  in  books,  like  Stow's 
Survey  of  London,  and  Harrison's  Description  of 
England  (prefixed  to  Holinshed's  Chronicle},  but 
in  long  historical  and  descriptive  poems,  like  Will- 
iam Warner's  Albion's  England,  1586;  Samuel 
Daniel's  History  of  the  Civil  Wars,  1595-1602; 
Michael  Drayton's  Baron's  Wars,  1596,  En- 
gland's Heroical  Epistles,  1598,  and  Polyolbion, 
1613.  The  very  plan  of  these  works  was  fatal  to 
their  success.  It  is  not  easy  to  digest  history  and 
geography  into  poetry.  Drayton  was  the  most 
considerable  poet  of  the  three,  but  his  Polyolbion 
was  nothing  more  than  "  a  gazeteer  in  rime,"  a 
topographical  survey  of  England  and  Wales,  with 
tedious  personifications  of  rivers,  mountains,  and 
valleys,  in  thirty  books  and  nearly  one  hundred 
thousand  lines.  It  was  Drayton  who  said  of  Mar- 
lowe, that  he  "  had  in  him  those  brave  translunary 
things  that  the  first  poets  had ;  "  and  there  are  brave 


94  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

things  in  Drayton,  but  they  are  -only  occasional 
passages,  oases  among  dreary  wastes  of  sand.  His 
Agincourt  is  a  spirited  war-song,  and  his  Nymph- 
idia  ;  or,  Court  of  Faery,  is  not  unworthy  of  com- 
parison with  Drake's  Culprit  Fay,  and  is  interest- 
ing as  bringing  in  Oberon  and  Robin  Goodfellow, 
and  the  popular  fairy  lore  of  Shakspere's  Midsum- 
mer Night's  Dream. 

The  "  well-languaged  Daniel,"  of  whom  Ben 
Jonson  said  that  he  was  "  a  good,  honest  man,  but 
no  poet,"  wrote,  however,  one  fine  meditative 
piece,  his  Epistle  to  the  Countess  of  Cumberland,  a 
sermon  apparently  on  the  text  of  the  Roman  poet 
Lucretius's  famous  passage  in  praise  of  philosophy, 

"  Suave  mari  magno,  turbantibus  aequora  vends,"  etc. 

But  the  Elisabethan  genius  found  its  fullest  and 
truest  expression  in  the  drama.  It  is  a  common 
phenomenon  in  the  history  of  literature  that  some 
old  literary  form  or  mold  will  run  along  for  cent- 
uries without  having  any  thing  poured  into  it 
worth  keeping,  until  the  moment  comes  when 
the  genius  of  the  time  seizes  it  and  makes  it  the 
vehicle  of  immortal  thought  and  passion.  Such 
was  in  England  the  fortune  of  the  stage  play.  At 
a  time  when  Chaucer  was  writing  character- 
sketches  that  were  really  dramatic,  the  formal 
drama  consisted  of  rude  miracle  plays  that  had  no 
literary  quality  whatever.  These  were  taken  from 
the  Bible  and  acted  at  first  by  the  priests  as  illus- 
trations of  Scripture  history  and  additions  to  the 


THE  AGE  OF  SHAKSPERE.  95 

church  service  on  feasts  and  saints'  days.  After- 
ward the  town  guilds,  or  incorporated  trades,  took 
hold  of  them  and  produced  them  annually  on 
scaffolds  in  the  open  air.  In  some  English  cities, 
as  Coventry  and  Chester,  they  continued  to  be 
performed  almost  to  the  close  of  the  i6th  century. 
And  in  the  celebrated  Passion  Play,  at  Oberam- 
mergau,  in  Bavaria,  we  have  an  instance  of  a 
miracle  play  that  has  survived  to  our  own  day. 
These  were  followed  by  the  moral  plays,  in  which 
allegorical  characters,  such  as  Clergy,  Lusty  Ju- 
ventus,  Riches,  Folly,  and  Good  Demeanaunce, 
were  the  persons  of  the  drama.  The  comic  char- 
acter in  the  miracle  plays  had  been  the  Devil,  and 
he  was  retained  in  some  of  the  moralities  side  by 
side  with  the  abstract  vice,  who  became  the  clown 
or  fool  of  Shaksperian  comedy.  The  "  formal 
Vice,  Iniquity,"  as  Shakspere  calls  him,  had  it  for 
his  business  to  belabor  the  roaring  Devil  with  his 
wooden  sword 

..."  with  his  dagger  of  lath 

In  his  rage  and  his  wrath 

Cries  '  Aha  ! '  to  the  Devil, 

'  Pare  your  nails,  Goodman  Evil ! ' " 

He  survives  also  in  the  harlequin  of  the  panto- 
mimes, and  in  Mr.  Punch,  of  the  puppet  shows, 
who  kills  the  Devil  and  carries  him  off  on  his 
back,  when  the  latter  is  sent  to  fetch  him  to  hell 
for  his  crimes. 

Masques  and  interludes — the  latter  a  species  of 


96  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

short  farce — were  popular  at  the  Court  of  Henry 
VIII.  Elisabeth  was  often  entertained  at  the 
universities  or  at  the  inns  of  court  with  Latin 
plays,  or  with  translations  from  Seneca,  Euripides, 
and  Ariosto.  Original  comedies  and  tragedies  be- 
gan to  be  written,  modeled  upon  Terence,  and 
Seneca,  and  chronicle  histories  founded  on  the 
annals  of  English  kings.  There  was  a  Master  of 
the  Revels  at  court,  whose  duty  it  was  to  select 
plays  to  be  performed  before  the  queen,  and  these 
were  acted  by  the  children  of  the  Royal  Chapel, 
or  by  the  choir  boys  of  St.  Paul's  Cathedral. 
These  early  plays  are  of  interest  to  students  of 
the  history  of  the  drama,  and  throw  much  light 
upon  the  construction  of  later  plays,  like  Shaks- 
pere's;  but  they  are  rude  and  inartistic,  and  with- 
out any  literary  quality. 

There  were  also  private  companies  of  actors 
maintained  by  wealthy  noblemen,  like  the  Earl  of 
Leicester,  and  bands  of  strolling  players,  who  acted 
in  inn-yards  and  bear-gardens.  It  was  not  until 
stationary  theaters  were  built  and  stock  companies 
of  actors  regularly  licensed  and  established,  that 
any  plays  were  produced  which  deserve  the  name  of 
literature.  In  1576  the  first  play-house  was  built 
in  London.  This  was  the  Black  Friars,  which  was 
located  within  the  liberties  of  the  dissolved  mon- 
astery of  the  Black  Friars,  in  order  to  be  outside 
of  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Mayor  and  Corporation, 
who  were  Puritan,  and  determined  in  their  oppo- 
sition to  the  stage.  For  the  same  reason  the 


THE  AGE  OF  SHAKSPERE.  97 

Tfieater  and  the  Curtain  were  built  in  the  same 
year,  outside  the  city  walls  in  Shoreditch.  Later 
the  Rose,  the  Globe,  and  the  Swan,  were  erected 
on  the  Bankside,  across  the  Thames,  and  play- 
goers resorting  to  them  were  accustomed  to  "  take 
boat." 

These  early  theaters  were  of  the  rudest  con- 
struction. The  six-penny  spectators,  or  "  ground- 
lings," stood  in  the  yard,  or  pit,  which  had  neither 
floor  nor  roof.  The  shilling  spectators  sat  on  the 
stage,  where  they  were  accommodated  with  stools 
and  tobacco  pipes,  and  whence  they  chaffed  the 
actors  or  the  "  opposed  rascality  "  in  the  yard. 
There  was  no  scenery,  and  the  female  parts  were 
taken  by  boys.  Plays  were  acted  in  the  after- 
noon. A  placard,  with  the  letters  "  Venice,"  or 
"  Rome,"  or  whatever,  indicated  the  place  of  the 
action.  With  such  rude  appliances  must  Shaks- 
pere  bring  before  his  audience  the  midnight  bat- 
tlements of  Elsinore  and  the  moonlit  garden  of 
the  Capulets.  The  dramatists  had  to  throw  them- 
selves upon  the  imagination  of  their  public,  and  it 
says  much  for  the  imaginative  temper  of  the  pub- 
lic of  that  day,  that  it  responded  to  the  appeal. 
It  suffered  the  poet  to  transport  it  over  wide  in- 
tervals of  space  and  time,  and  "  with  aid  of  some 
few  foot  and  half-foot  words,  fight  over  York 
and  Lancaster's  long  jars."  Pedantry  undertook, 
even  at  the  very  beginnings  of  the  Elisabethan 
drama,  to  shackle  it  with  the  so-called  rules  of 
Aristotle,  or  classical  unities  of  time  and  place, 


98  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

to  make  it  keep  violent  action  off  the  stage  and 
comedy  distinct  from  tragedy.  But  the  play- 
wrights appealed  from  the  critics  to  the  truer 
sympathies  of  the  audience,  and  they  decided  for 
freedom  and  action,  rather  than  restraint  and 
recitation.  Hence  our  national  drama  is  of 
Shakspere,  and  not  of  Racine.  By  1603  there 
were  twelve  play-houses  in  London  in  full  blast, 
although  the  city  then  numbered  only  one  hundred 
and  fifty  thousand  inhabitants. 

Fresh  plays  were  produced  every  year.  The 
theater  was  more  to  the  Englishman  of  that 
time  than  it  has  ever  been  before  or  since.  It 
was  his  club,  his  novel,  his  newspaper  all  in  one. 
No  great  drama  has  ever  flourished  apart  from 
a  living  stage,  and  it  was  fortunate  that  the 
Elisabethan  dramatists  were,  almost  all  of  them, 
actors  and  familiar  with  stage  effect.  Even  the 
few  exceptions,  like  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  who 
were  young  men  of  good  birth  and  fortune,  and 
not  dependent  on  their  pens,  were  probably  in- 
timate with  the  actors,  lived  in  a  theatrical  atmos- 
phere, and  knew  practically  how  plays  should  be 
put  on. 

It  had  now  become  possible  to  earn  a  livelihood 
as  an  actor  and  playwright.  Richard  Burbage 
and  Edward  Alleyn,  the  leading  actors  of  their 
generation,  made  large  fortunes.  Shakspere  him- 
self made  enough  from  his  share  in  the  profits  of 
the  Globe  to  retire  with  a  competence,  some  seven 
years  before  his  death,  and  purchase  a  handsome 


THE  AGE  OF  SHAKSPERE. 


99 


property  in  his  native  Stratford.  Accordingly, 
shortly  after  1580,  a  number  of  men  of  real  talent 
began  to  write  for  the  stage  "as  a  career.  These 
were  young  graduates  of  the  universities,  Mar- 
lowe, Greene,  Peele,  Kyd,  Lyly,  Lodge,  and 
others,  who  came  up  to  town  and  led  a  Bohemian 
life  as  actors  and  playwrights.  Most  of  them  were 
wild  and  dissipated,  and  ended  in  wretchedness. 
Peele  died  of  a  disease  brought  on  by  his  evil 
courses;  Greene,  in  extreme  destitution,  from  a 
surfeit  of  Rhenish  wine  and  pickled  herring;  and 
Marlowe  was  stabbed  in  a  tavern  brawl. 

The  Euphuist  Lyly  produced  eight  plays  from 
1584  to  1601.  They  were  written  for  court  en- 
tertainments, in  prose  and  mostly  on  mythological 
subjects.  They  have  little  dramatic  power,  but 
the  dialogue  is  brisk  and  vivacious,  and  there  are 
several  pretty  songs  in  them.  All  the  characters 
talk  Euphuism.  The  best  of  these  was  Alexander 
and  Campaspe,  the  plot  of  which  is  briefly  as 
follows.  Alexander  has  fallen  in  love  with  his 
beautiful  captive,  Campaspe,  and  employs  the 
artist  Apelles  to  paint  her  portrait.  During  the 
sittings,  Apelles  becomes  enamored  of  his  sub- 
ject and  declares  his  passion,  which  is  returned. 
Alexander  discovers  their  secret,  .but  magnani- 
mously forgives  the  treason  and  joins  the  lovers' 
hands.  The  situation  is  a  good  one,  and  capable 
of  strong  treatment  in  the  hands  of  a  real  drama- 
tist. But  Lyly  slips  smoothly  over  the  crisis  of 
the  action  and,  in  place  of  passionate  scenes,  gives 


TOO  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

us  clever  discourses  and  soliloquies,  or,  at  best,  a 
light  interchange  of  question  and  answer,  full  of 
conceits,  repartees,  and  double  meanings.  For  ex- 
ample: 

"  Apel.  Whom  do  you  love  best  in  the. world  ? 

"  Camp.  He  that  made  me  last  in  the  world. 

"  Apel.  That  was  a  God. 

"  Camp.  I  had  thought  it  had  been  a  man,"  etc. 

Lyly's  service  to  the  drama  consisted  in  his  in- 
troduction of  an  easy  and  sparkling  prose  as  the 
language  of  high  comedy,  and  Shakspere's  in- 
debtedness to  the  fashion  thus  set  is  seen  in  such 
passages  as  the  wit  combats  between  Benedict  and 
Beatrice  in  Much  Ado  about  Nothing,  greatly  su- 
perior as  they  are  to  any  thing  of  the  kind  in 
Lyly. 

The  most  important  of  the  dramatists,  who  were 
Shakspere's  forerunners,  or  early  contemporaries, 
was  Christopher  or — as  he  was  familiarly  called — 
Kit  Marlowe.  Born  in  the  same  year  with  Shaks- 
pere  (1564),  he  died  in  1593,  at  which  date  his 
great  successor  is  thought  to  have  written  no  orig- 
inal plays,  except  the  Comedy  of  Errors  and  Love's 
Labour's  Lost.  Marlowe  first  popularized  blank 
verse  as  the  language  of  tragedy  in  his  Tam- 
burlaine,  written  before  1587,  and  in  subsequent 
plays  he  brought  it  to  a  degree  of  strength  and 
flexibility  which  left  little  for  Shakspere  to  do  but 
to  take  it  as  he  found  it.  Tamburlaine  was  a 
crude,  violent  piece,  full  of  exaggeration  and  bom- 
bast, but  with  passages  here  and  there  of  splendid 


THE  AGE  OF  SHAKSPERE.  101 

declamation,  justifying  Ben  Jonson's  phrase,  "  Mar- 
lowe's mighty  line."  Jonson,  however,  ridiculed, 
in  his  Discoveries,  the  "  scenical  strutting  and 
furious  vociferation "  of  Marlowe's  hero;  and 
Shakspere  put  a  quotation  from  Tamburlaine  in- 
to the  mouth  of  his  ranting  Pistol.  Marlowe's  Ed- 
ward II.  was  the  most  regularly  constructed  and 
evenly  written  of  his  plays.  It  was  the  best  his- 
torical drama  on  the  stage  before  Shakspere,  and 
not  undeserving  of  the  comparison  which  it  has 
provoked  with  the  latter's  Richard  II.  But  the 
most  interesting  of  Marlowe's  plays,  to  a  modern 
reader,  is  the  Tragical  History  of  Doctor  Faustus. 
The  subject  is  the  same  as  in  Goethe's  Faust,  and 
Goethe,  who  knew  the  English  play,  spoke  of  it 
as  greatly  planned.  The  opening  of  Marlowe's 
Faustus  is  very  similiar  to  Goethe's.  His  hero, 
wearied  with  unprofitable  studies,  and  filled  with  a 
mighty  lust  for  knowledge  and  the  enjoyment  of 
life,  sells  his  soul  to  the  Devil  in  return  for  a  few 
years  of  supernatural  power.  The  tragic  irony  of 
the  story  might  seem  to  lie  in  the  frivolous  use 
which  Faustus  makes  of  his  dearly  bought  power, 
wasting  it  in  practical  jokes  and  feats  of  legerde- 
main; but  of  this  Marlowe  was  probably  uncon- 
scious. The  love  story  of  Margaret,  which  is  the 
central  point  of  Goethe's  drama,  is  entirely  wanting 
in  Marlowe's,  and  so  is  the  subtle  conception  of 
Goethe's  Mephistophiles.  Marlowe's  handling  of 
the  supernatural  is  materialistic  and  downright,  as 
befitted  an  age  which  believed  in  witchcraft.  The 


io2  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

greatest  part  of  the  English  Faustus  is  the  last 
scene,  in  which  the  agony  and  terror  of  suspense 
with  which  the  magician  awaits  the  stroke  of  the 
clock  that  signals  his  doom  are  powerfully  drawn. 

"  0  lente,  lente  cUrrile,  noctis  equi! 

The  stars  move  still,  time  runs,  the  clock  will  strike.  .  . 

O  soul,  be  changed  into  little  water-drops, 

And  fall  into  the  ocean,  ne'er  be  found  !" 

Marlowe's  genius  vwas  passionate  and  irregular. 
He  had  no  humor,  and  the  comic  portions  of 
Faustus  are  scenes  of  low  buffoonery. 

George  Peele's  masterpiece,  David  and  Bethsabe, 
was  also,  in  many  respects,  a  fine  play,  though  its 
beauties  were  poetic  rather  than  dramatic,  consist- 
ing not  in  the  characterization — which  is  feeble — 
but  in  the  eastern  luxuriance  of  the  imagery.  There 
is  one  noble  chorus — 

"  O  proud  revolt  of  a  presumptuous  man,"  etc. 

which  reminds  one  of  passages  in  Milton's  Samson 
Agonistes,  and  occasionally  Peele  rises  to  such 
high  Aeschylean  audacities  as  this  : 

"  At  him  the  thunder  shall  discharge  his  bolt, 
And  his  fair  spouse,  with  bright  and  fiery  wings, 
Sit  ever  burning  on  his  hateful  bones." 

Robert  Greene  was  a  very  unequal  writer.  His 
plays  are  slovenly  and  careless  in  construction,  and 
he  puts  classical  allusions  into  the  mouths  of  milk- 
maids and  serving  boys,  with  the  grotesque  ped- 
antry and  want  of  keeping  common  among  the 


THE  AGE  OF  SHAKSPERE.  103 

playwrights  of  the  early  stage.  He  has,  notwith- 
standing, in  his  comedy  parts,  more  natural  light- 
ness and  grace  than  either  Marlowe  or  Peele.  In 
his  Friar  Bacon  and  Friar  Bungay,  and  his  Pinner 
of  Wakefield,  there  is  a  fresh  breath,  as  of  the 
green  English  country,  in  such  passages  as  the  de- 
scription of  Oxford,  the  scene  at  Harleston  Fair, 
and  the  picture  of  the  dairy  in  the  keeper's  lodge 
at  merry  Fressingfield. 

In  all  these  ante-Shaksperian  dramatists  there 
was  a  defect  of  art  proper  to  the  first  comers  in  a 
new  literary  departure.  As  compared  not  only 
with  Shakspere,  but  with  later  writers,  who  had  the 
inestimable  advantage  of  his  example,  their  work 
was  full  of  imperfection,  hesitation,  experiment. 
Marlowe  was  probably,  in  native  genius,  the  equal 
at  least  of  Fletcher  or  Webster,  but  his  plays,  as  a 
whole,  are  certainly  not  equal  to  theirs.  They 
wrote  in  a  more  developed  state  of  the  art.  But 
the  work  of  this  early  school  settled  the  shape 
which  the  English  drama  was  to  take.  It  fixed  the 
practice  and  traditions  of  the  national  theater.  It 
decided  that  the  drama  was  to  deal  with  the  whole 
of  life,  the  real  and  the  ideal,  tragedy  and  comedy, 
prose  and  verse,  in  the  same  play,  without  limita- 
tions of  time,  place,  and  action.  It  decided  that 
the  English  play  was  to  be  an  action,  and  not  a 
dialogue,  bringing  boldly  upon  the  mimic  scene 
feasts,  dances,  processions,  hangings,  riots,  plays 
within  plays,  drunken  revels,  beatings,  battle,  mur- 
der, and  sudden  death.  It  established  blank  verse, 


io4  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

with  occasional  riming  couplets  at  the  close  of  a 
scene  or  of  a  long  speech,  as  the  language  of  the 
tragedy  and  high  comedy  parts,  and  prose  as  the 
language  of  the  low  comedy  and  "  business  "  parts. 
And  it  introduced  songs,  a  feature  of  which  Shaks- 
pere  made  exquisite  use.  Shakspere,  indeed,  like 
all  great  poets,  invented  no  new  form  of  literature, 
but  touched  old  forms  to  finer  purposes,  refining 
every  thing,  discarding  nothing.  Even  the  old 
chorus  and  dumb  show  he  employed,  though 
sparingly,  as  also  the  old  jig,  or  comic  song,  which 
the  clown  used  to  give  between  tne  acts. 

Of  the  life  of  William  Shakspere,  the  greatest 
dramatic  poet  of  the  world,  so  little  is  known  that 
it  has  been  possible  for  ingenious  persons  to  con- 
struct a  theory — and  support  it  with  some  show  of 
reason — that  the  plays  which  pass  under  his  name 
were  really  written  by  Bacon  or  some  one  else. 
There  is  no  danger  of  this  paradox  ever  making 
serious  headway,  for  the  historical  evidence  that 
Shakspere  wrote  Shakspere's  plays,  though  not 
overwhelming,  is  sufficient.  But  it  is  startling  to 
think  that  the  greatest  creative  genius  of  his  day, 
or  perhaps  of  all  time,  was  suffered  to  slip  out  of 
life  so  quietly  that  his  title  to  his  own  works  could 
even  be  questioned  only  two  hundred  and  fifty 
years  after  the  event.  That  the  single  authorship 
of  the  Homeric  poems  should  be  doubted  is  not  so 
strange,  for  Homer  is  almost  prehistoric.  But 
Shakspere  was  a  modern  Englishman,  and  at  the 
time  of  his  death  the  first  English  colony  in  Amer- 


THE  AGE  OF  SHAKSPERE.  105 

ica  was  already  nine  years  old.  The  important 
known  facts  of  his  life  can  be  told  almost  in  a  sen- 
tence. He  was  born  at  Stratford-on-Avon  in  1564, 
married  when  he  was  eighteen,  went  to  London 
probably  in  1587,  and  became  an  actor,  play  writer, 
and  stockholder  in  the  company  which  owned  the 
Blackfriars  and  the  Globe  Theaters.  He  seem- 
ingly prospered  in  his  calling  and  retired  about 
1609  to  Stratford,  where  he  lived  in  the  house  that 
he  had  bought  some  years  before,  and  where  he 
died  in  1616.  His  Venus  and  Adonis  was  printed 
in  1593,  the  Rape  of  Lucrece  in  1594,  and  his  Son- 
nets in  1609.  So  far  as  is  known,  only  eighteen 
of  the  thirty-seven  plays  generally  attributed  to 
Shakspere  were  printed  during  his  life-time.  These 
were  printed  singly,  in  quarto  shape,  and  were  little 
more  than  stage  books,  or  librettos.  The  first  col- 
lected edition  of  his  works  was  the  so-called  "  First 
Folio "  of  1623,  published  by  his  fellow-actors, 
Heming  and  Condell.  No  contemporary  of  Shaks- 
pere thought  it  worth  while  to  write  a  life  of  the 
stage-player.  There  are  a  number  of  references  to 
him  in  the  literature  of  the  time;  some  generous, 
as  in  Ben  Jonson's  well-known  verses;  others 
singularly  unappreciative,  like  Webster's  mention 
of  "the  right  happy  and  copious  industry  of  Mas- 
ter Shakspere."  But  all  these  together  do  not  be- 
gin to  amount  to  the  sum  of  what  was  said  about 
Spenser,  or  Sidney,  or  Raleigh,  or  Ben  Jonson. 
There  is,  indeed,  nothing  to  show  that  his  con- 
temporaries understood  what  a  man  they  had 


106  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

among  them  in  the  person  of  "  Our  English  Ter- 
ence, Mr.  Will  Shakespeare  !  "  The  age,  for  the 
rest,  was  not  a  self-conscious  one,  nor  greatly 
given  to  review  writing  and  literary  biography. 
Nor  is  there  enough  of  self-revelation  in  Shaks- 
pere's  plays  to  aid  the  reader  in  forming  a  notion 
of  the  man.  He  lost  his  identity  completely  in  the 
characters  of  his  plays,  as  it  is  the  duty  of  a  dra- 
matic writer  to  do.  His  sonnets  have  been  ex- 
amined carefully  in  search  of  internal  evidence  as 
to  his  character  and  life,  but  the  speculations 
founded  upon  them  have  been  more  ingenious 
than  convincing. 

Shakspere  probably  began  by  touching  up  old 
plays.  Henry  VI.  and  the  bloody  tragedy  of  Titus 
Andronicus,  if  Shakspere's  at  all,  are  doubtless 
only  his  revision  of  pieces  already  on  the  stage. 
The  Taming  of  the  Shrew  seems  to  be  an  old  play 
worked  over  by  Shakspere  and  some  other  drama- 
tist, and  traces  of  another  hand  are  thought  to  be 
visible  in  parts  of  Henry  VIII.,  Pericles,  and  Timon 
of  Athens.  Such  partnerships  were  common  among 
the  Elisabethan  dramatists,  the  most  illustrious  ex- 
ample being  the  long  association  of  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher.  The  plays  in  the  First  Folio  were  divided 
into  histories,  comedies,  and  tragedies,  and  it  will 
be  convenient  to  notice  them  briefly  in  that  order. 

It  was  a  stirring  time  when  the  young  adventurer 
came  to  London  to  try  his  fortune.  Elisabeth  had 
finally  thrown  down  the  gage  of  battle  to  Catholic 
Europe,  by  the  execution  of  Mary  Stuart,  in  1587. 


THE  AGE  OF  SHAKSPERE.  107 

The  following  year  saw  the  destruction  of  the  co- 
lossal Armada,  which  Spain  had  sent  to  revenge 
Mary's  death,  and  hard  upon  these  events  followed 
the  gallant  exploits  of  Grenville,  Essex,  and 
Raleigh. 

That  Shakspere  shared  the  exultant  patriotism  of 
the  times,  and  the  sense  of  their  aloofness  from  the 
continent  of  Europe,  which  was  now  born  in  the 
breasts  of  Englishmen,  is  evident  from  many  a 
passage  in  his  plays. 

"  This  happy  breed  of  men,  this  little  world, 

This  precious  stone  set  in  a  silver  sea, 

This  blessed  plot,  this  earth,  this  realm,  this  England, 

This  land  of  such  dear  souls,  this  dear,  dear  land, 

England,  bound  in  with  the  triumphant  sea  !" 

His  English  histories  are  ten  in  number.  Of 
these  King  John  and  Henry  VIII.  are  isolated 
plays.  The  others  form  a  consecutive  series,  in 
the  following  order:  Richard  ///.,  the  two  parts 
of  Htnry  IV.,  Henry  V.y  the  three  parts  of  Henry 
VI.,  and  Richard  III.  This  series  may  be  divided 
into  two,  each  forming  a  tetralogy,  or  group  of 
four  plays.  In  the  first  the  subject  is  the  rise  of 
the  house  of  Lancaster.  But  the  power  of  the  Red 
Rose  was  founded  in  usurpation.  In  the  second 
group,  accordingly,  comes  the  Nemesis,  in  the  civil 
wars  of  the  Roses,  reaching  their  catastrophe  in  the 
downfall  of  both  Lancaster  and  York,  and  the 
tyranny  of  Gloucester.  The  happy  conclusion  is 
finally  reached  in  the  last  play  of  the  series,  when 
this  new  usurper  is  overthrown  in  turn,  and  Henry 


io8  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

VII.,  the  first  Tudor  sovereign,  ascends  the  throne, 
and  restores  the  Lancastrian  inheritance,  purified, 
by  bloody  atonement,  from  the  stain  of  Richard 
II. 's  murder.  These  eight  plays  are,  as  it  were,  the 
eight  acts  of  one  great  drama;  and  if  such  a  thing 
were  possible,  they  should  be  represented  on  suc- 
cessive nights,  like  the  parts  of  a  Greek  trilogy.  In 
order  of  composition,  the  second  group  came  first. 
Henry  VI.  is  strikingly  inferior  to  the  others. 
Richard  III.  is  a  good  acting  play,  and  its  popu- 
larity has  been  sustained  by  a  series  of  great  tra- 
gedians, who  have  taken  the  part  of  the  king.  But, 
in  a  literary  sense,  it  is  unequal  to  Richard  //.,  or 
the  two  parts  of  Henry  IV.  The  latter  is  unques- 
tionably Shakspere's  greatest  historical  tragedy,  and 
it  contains  his  master-creation  in  the  region  of  low 
comedy,  the  immortal  Falstaff. 

The  constructive  art  with  which  Shakspere 
shaped  history  into  drama  is  well  seen  in  compar- 
ing his  King  John  with  the  two  plays  on  that  sub- 
ject, which  were  already  on  the  stage.  These,  like 
all  the  other  old  "  Chronicle  histories,"  such  as 
Thomas  Lord  Cromwell  and  the  Famous  Victories 
of  Henry  V.,  follow  a  merely  chronological,  or  bio- 
graphical, order,  giving  events  loosely,  as  they  oc- 
curred, without  any  unity  of  effect,  or  any  reference 
to  their  bearing  on  the  catastrophe.  Shakspere's 
order  was  logical.  He  compressed  and  selected,  dis- 
regarding the  fact  of  history  oftentimes,  in  favor  of 
the  higher  truth  of  fiction;  bringing  together  a 
crime  and  its  punishment,  as  cause  and  effect,  even 


THE  AGE  OF  SHAKSPERE.  109 

though  they  had  no  such  relation  in  the  chronicle, 
and  were  separated,  perhaps,  by  many  years. 

Shakspere's  first  two  comedies  were  experiments. 
Love's  Labour's  Lost  was  a  play  of  manners,  with 
hardly  any  plot.  It  brought  together  a  number  of 
humors,  that  is,  oddities  and  affectations  of  vari- 
ous sorts,  and  played  them  off  on  one  another,  as 
Ben  Jonson  afterward  did  in  his  comedies  of  hu- 
mor. Shakspere  never  returned  to  this  type  of 
play,  unless,  perhaps,  in  the  Taming  of  the  Shrew. 
There  the  story  turned  on  a  single  "  humor,"  Kath- 
erine's  bad  temper,  just  as  the  story  in  Jonson's 
Silent  Woman  turned  on  Morose's  hatred  of  noise. 
The  Taming  of  the  Shrew  is,  therefore,  one  of  the 
least  Shaksperian  of  Shakspere's  plays;  a  bourgeois, 
domestic  comedy,  with  a  very  narrow  interest.  It 
belongs  to  the  school  of  French  comedy,  like 
Moliere's  Malade  Imagtnaire,  not  to  the  romantic 
comedy  of  Shakspere  and  Fletcher. 

The  Comedy  of  Errors  was  an  experiment  of  an 
exactly  opposite  kind.  It  was  a  play,  purely  of"  inci- 
dent ;  a  farce,  in  which  the  main  improbability 
being  granted,  namely,  that  the  twin  Antipholi  and 
twin  Dromios  are  so  alike  that  they  cannot  be  dis- 
tinguished, all  the  amusing  complications  follow 
naturally  enough.  There  is  little  character-draw- 
ing in  the  play.  Any  two  pairs  of  twins,  in  the 
same  predicament,  would  be  equally  droll.  The 
fun  lies  in  the  situation.  This  was  a  comedy  of 
the  Latin  school,  and  resembled  the  Menaechmi  of 
Plautus.  Shakspere  never  returned  to  this  type  of 


no  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

play,  though  there  is  an  element  of  "  errors "  in 
Midsummer  Night's  Dream.  In  the  Two  Gentle- 
men of  Verona  he  finally  hit  upon  that  species  of 
romantic  comedy  which  he  may  be  said  to  have 
invented  or  created  out  of  the  scattered  materials 
at  hand  in  the  works  of  his  predecessors.  In  this 
play,  as  in  the  Merchant  of  Venice,  Midsummer 
Nighfs  Dream,  Much  Ado  about  Nothing,  As  You 
Like  It,  Twelfth  Night,  Winters  Tale,  All's  Well 
that  Ends  Well,  Measure  for  Measure,  and  the 
Tempest,  the  plan  of  construction  is  as  follows. 
There  is  one  main  intrigue  carried  out  by  the  high 
comedy  characters,  and  a  secondary  intrigue,  or 
underplot,  by  the  low  comedy  characters.  The 
former  is  by  no  means  purely  comic,  but  admits 
the  presentation  of  the  noblest  motives,  the 
strongest  passions,  and  the  most  delicate  graces  of 
romantic  poetry.  In  some  of  the  plays  it  has  a 
prevailing  lightness  and  gayety,  as  in  As  You  Like  It 
and  Twelfth  Night.  In  others,  like  Measure  for 
Measure,  it  is  barely  saved  from  becoming  tragedy 
by  the  happy  close.  Shylock  certainly  remains  a 
tragic  figure,  even  to  the  end,  and  a  play  like  Win- 
ter's Tale,  in  which  the  painful  situation  is  pro- 
longed for  years,  is  only  technically  a  comedy. 
Such  dramas,  indeed,  were  called,  on  many  of  the 
title-pages  of  the  time,  "  tragi-comedies."  The 
low  comedy  interlude,  on  the  other  hand,  was 
broadly  cosmic.  It  was  cunningly  interwoven  with 
the  texture  of  the  play,  sometimes  loosely,  and  by 
yay  of  variety  or  relief,  as  in  the  episode  of  Touch- 


THE  AGE  OF  SHAKSPERE.  in 

stone  and  Audrey,  in  As  You  Like  It;  sometimes 
closely,  as  in  the  case  of  Dogberry  and  Verges,  in 
Much  Ado  about  Nothing,  where  the  blunder- 
ing of  the  watch  is  made  to  bring  about  the  de- 
nouement of  the  main  action.  The  Merry  Wives 
of  Windsor  is  an  exception  to  this  plan  of  con- 
struction. It  is  Shakspere's  only  play  of  contem- 
porary, middle-class  English  life,  and  is  written 
almost  throughout  in  prose.  It  is  his  only  pure 
comedy,  except  the  Taming  of  the  Shrew. 

Shakspere  did  not  abandon  comedy  when  writing 
tragedy,  though  he  turned  it  to  a  new  account.  The 
two  species  graded  into  one  another.  Thus  Cym- 
beline  is,  in  its  fortunate  ending,  really  as  much  of 
a  comedy  as  Winter 's  Tale — to  which  its  plot  bears 
a  resemblance — and  is  only  technically  a  tragedy, 
because  it  contains  a  violent  death.  In  some  of 
the  tragedies,  as  Macbeth  and  Julius  Ccesar,  the 
comedy  element  is  reduced  to  a  minimum.  But  in 
others,  as  Romeo  and  Juliet,  and  Hamlet,  it  heightens 
the  tragic  feeling  by  the  irony  of  contrast  Akin 
to  this  is  the  use  to  which  Shakspere  put  the  old 
Vice,  or  Clown,  of  the  moralities.  The  Fool  in 
Lear,  Touchstone  in  As  You  Like  It,  and  Thersites 
in  Troilus  and  Cressida,  are  a  sort  of  parody  of  the 
function  of  the  Greek  chorus,  commenting  the  ac- 
tion of  the  drama  with  scraps  of  bitter,  or  half- 
crazy,  philosophy,  and  wonderful  gleams  of  insight 
into  the  depths  of  man's  nature. 

The  earliest  of  Shakspere's  tragedies,  unless 
Titus  Andronicus  be  his,  was,  doubtless,  Romeo  and 


ii2  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

Juliet,  which  is  full  of  the  passion  and  poetry  of 
youth  and  of  first  love.  It  contains  a  large  pro- 
portion of  riming  lines,  which  is  usually  a  sign  in 
Shakspere  of  early  work.  He  dropped  rime  more 
and  more  in  his  later  plays,  and  his  blank  verse 
grew  freer  and  more  varied  in  its  pauses  and  the 
number  of  its  feet.  Romeo  and  Juliet  is  also  unique, 
among  his  tragedies,  in  this  respect,  that  the  catas- 
trophe is  brought  about  by  a  fatality,  as  in  the 
Greek  drama.  It  was  Shakspere's  habit  to  work 
out  his  tragic  conclusions  from  within,  through 
character,  rather  than  through  external  chances. 
This  is  true  of  all  the  great  tragedies  of  his  middle 
life,  Hamlet,  Othello,  Lear,  Macbeth,  in  every  one 
of  which  the  catastrophe  is  involved  in  the  charac- 
ter and  actions  of  the  hero.  This  is  so,  in  a  special 
sense,  in  Hamlet,  the  subtlest  of  all  Shakspere's 
plays,  and  if  not  his  masterpiece,  at  any  rate  the 
one  which  has  most  attracted  and  puzzled  the 
greatest  minds.  It  is  observable  that  in  Shakspere's 
comedies  there  is  no  one  central  figure,  but  that,  in 
passing  into  tragedy,  he  intensified  and  concen- 
trated the  attention  upon  a  single  character.  This 
difference  is  seen,  even  in  the  naming  of  the  plays; 
the  tragedies  always  take  their  titles  from  their 
heroes,  the  comedies  never. 

Somewhat  later,  probably,  than  the  tragedies  al- 
ready mentioned,  were  the  three  Roman  plays, 
Julius  Cizsar,  Coriolanus,  and  Anthony  and  Cleo- 
patra. It  is  characteristic  of  Shakspere  that  he 
invented  the  plot  of  none  of  his  plays,  but  took 


THE  AGE  OF  SHAKSPERE.  113 

material  that  he  found  at  hand.  In  these  Roman 
tragedies,  he  followed  Plutarch  closely,  and  yet, 
even  in  so  doing,  gave,  if  possible,  a  greater  evi- 
dence of  real  creative  power  than  when  he  bor- 
rowed a  mere  outline  of  a  story  from  some  Italian 
novelist.  It  is  most  instructive  to  compare  Julius 
Casar  with  Ben  Jonson's  Catiline  and  Sejanus. 
Jonson  was  careful  not  to  go  beyond  his  text.  In 
Catiline  he  translates  almost  literally  the  whole  of 
Cicero's  first  oration  against  Catiline.  Sejanus  is 
a  mosaic  of  passages,  from  Tacitus  and  Suetonius. 
There  is  none  of  this  dead  learning  in  Shakspere's 
play.  Having  grasped  the  conception  of  the  char- 
acters of  Brutus,  Cassius,  and  Mark  Anthony,  as 
Plutarch  gave  them,  he  pushed  them  out  into  their 
consequences  in  every  word  and  act,  so  independ- 
ently of  his  original,  and  yet  so  harmoniously  with 
it,  that  the  reader  knows  that  he  is  reading  history, 
and  needs  no  further  warrant  for  it  than  Shakspere's 
own.  Timon  of  Athens  is  the  least  agreeable  and 
most  monotonous  of  Shakspere's  undoubted  trag- 
edies, and  Troilus  and  Cressida,  said  Coleridge,  is 
the  hardest  to  characterize.  The  figures  of  the  old 
Homeric  world  fare  but  hardly  under  the  glaring 
light  of  modern  standards  of  morality  which  Shaks- 
pere  turns  upon  them.  Ajax  becomes  a  stupid 
bully,  Ulysses  a  crafty  politician,  and  swift-footed 
Achilles  a  vain  and  sulky  chief  of  faction.  In  los 
ing  their  ideal  remoteness,  the  heroes  of  the  Iliad 
lose  their  poetic  quality,  and  the  lover  of  Homer 

experiences  an  unpleasant  disenchantment. 
8 


H4  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

It  was  customary  in  the  i8th  century  to  speak 
of  Shakspere  as  a  rude  though  prodigious  genius. 
Even  Milton  could  describe  him  as  "  warbling  his 
native  wood-notes  wild."  But  a  truer  criticism, 
beginning  in  England  with  Coleridge,  has  shown 
that  he  was  also  a  profound  artist.  It  is  true  that 
he  wrote  for  his  audiences,  and  that  his  art  is  not 
every-where  and  at  all  points  perfect.  But  a  great 
artist  will  contrive,  as  Shakspere  did,  to  reconcile 
practical  exigencies,  like  those  of  the  public  stage, 
with  the  finer  requirements  of  his  art.  Strained  in- 
terpretations have  been  put  upon  this  or  that  item 
in  Shakspere's  plays;  and  yet  it  is  generally  true 
that  some  deeper  reason  can  be  assigned  for  his 
method  in  a  given  case  than  that  "  the  audience  liked 
puns,"  or,  "the  audience  liked  ghosts."  Compare, 
for  example,  his  delicate  management  of  the  su- 
pernatural with  Marlowe's  procedure  in  Faustus. 
Shakspere's  age  believed  in  witches,  elves,  and  ap- 
paritions; and  yet  there  is  always  something  shad- 
owy or  allegorical  in  his  use  of  such  machinery. 
The  ghost  in  Hamlet  is  merely  an  embodied  suspi- 
cion. Banquo's  wraith,  which  is  invisible  to  all  but 
Macbeth,  is  the  haunting  of  an  evil  conscience. 
The  witches  in  the  same  play  are  but  the  prompt- 
ings of  ambition,  thrown  into  a  human  shape,  so  as 
to  become  actors  in  the  drama.  In  the  same  way, 
the  fairies  in  Midsummer  Nighfs  Dream  are  the 
personified  caprices  of  the  lovers,  and  they  are 
unseen  by  the  human  characters,  whose  likes  and 
dislikes  they  control,  save  in  the  instance  where 


THE  AGE  OF  SIIAKSPERE.  115 

Bottom  is  "  translated "  (that  is,  becomes  mad) 
and  has  sight  of  the  invisible  world.  So  in  the 
Tempest,  Ariel  is  the  spirit  of  the  air  and  Caliban 
of  the  earth,  ministering,  with  more  or  less  of  un- 
willingness, to  man's  necessities. 

Shakspere  is  the  most  universal  of  writers.  He 
touches  more  men  at  more  points  than'  Homer,  or 
Dante,  or  Goethe.  The  deepest  wisdom,  the  sweet- 
est poetry,  the  widest  range  of  character,  are  com- 
bined in  his  plays.  He  made  the  English  language 
an  organ  of  expression  unexcelled  in  the  history  of 
literature.  Yet  he  is  not  an  English  poet  simply, 
but  a  world-poet.  Germany  has  made  him  her 
own,  and  the  Latin  races,  though  at  first  hindered 
in  a  true  appreciation  of  him  by  the  canons  of  clas- 
sical taste,  have  at  length  learned  to  know  him. 
An  ever-growing  mass  of  Shaksperian  literature,  in 
the  way  of  comment  and  interpretation,  critical,  text- 
ual, historical,  or  illustrative,  testifies  to  the  dura- 
bility and  growth  of  his  fame.  Above  all,  his  plays 
still  keep,  and  probably  always  will  keep,  the  stage. 
It  is  common  to  speak  of  Shakspere  and  the  other 
Elisabethan  dramatists  as  if  they  stood,  in  some 
sense,  on  a  level.  But  in  truth  there  is  an  almost 
measureless  distance  between  him  and  all  his  con- 
temporaries. The  rest  shared  with*  him  in  the 
mighty  influences  of  the  age.  Their  plays  are 
touched  here  and  there  with  the  power  and  splen- 
dor of  which  they  were  all  joint  heirs.  But,  as  a 
whole,  they  are  obsolete.  They  live  in  books,  but 
not  in  the  hearts  and  on  the  tongues  of  men.  The 


n6  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

most  remarkable  of  the  dramatists  contemporary 
with  Shakspere  was  Ben  Jonson,  whose  robust  fig- 
ure is  in  striking  contrast  with  the  other's  gracious 
impersonality.  Jonson  was  nine  years  younger 
than  Shakspere.  He  was  educated  at  Westminster 
School,  served  as  a  soldier  in  the  low  countries, 
became  an  actor  in  Henslowe's  company,  and  was 
twice  imprisoned — once  for  killing  a  fellow-actor  in 
a  duel,  and  once  for  his  part  in  the  comedy  of 
Eastward  Hoe,  which  gave  offense  to  King  James. 
He  lived  down  to  the  times  of  Charles  I.  (1635),  and 
became  the  acknowledged  arbiter  of  English  letters 
and  the  center  of  convivial  wit  combats  at  the  Mer- 
maid, the  Devil,  and  other  famous  London  taverns. 

"  What  things  have  we  seen 

Done  at  the  Mermaid  ;  heard  words  that  have  been 
So  nimble  and  so  full  of  subtle  flame, 
As  if  that  every  one  from  whom  they  came 
Had  meant  to  put  his  whole  wit  in  a  jest, 
And  had  resolved  to  live  a  fool  the  rest 
Of  his  dull  life."* 

The  inscription  on  his  tomb,  in  Westminster  Abbey, 
is  simply 

"  O  rare  Ben  Jonson! " 

Jonson's  comedies  were  modeled  upon  the  vetus 
com&dia  of  Aristophanes,  which  was  satirical  in  pur- 
pose, and  they  belonged  to  an  entirely  different 
school  from  Shakspere's.  They  were  classical  and 
not  romantic,  and  were  pure  comedies,  admitting 

*  Francis  Beaumont.     Letter  to  Ben  Jonson. 


THE  AGE  OF  SHAKSPERE.  117 

0 

no  admixture  of  tragic  motives.  There  is  hardly 
one  lovely  or  beautiful  character  in  the  entire  range 
of  his  dramatic  creations.  They  were  comedies 
not  of  character,  in  the  high  sense  of  the  word,  but 
of  manners  or  humors.  His  design  was  to  lash  the 
follies  and  vices  of  the  day,  and  his  dramatis  per- 
sona consisted  for  the  most  part  of  gulls,  impostors, 
fops,  cowards,  swaggering  braggarts,  and  "  Pauls 
men."  In  his  first  play,  Every  Man  in  his  Humor 
(acted  in  1598),  in  Every  Man  Out  of  his  Humor, 
Bartholomew  Fair,  and  indeed,  in  all  of  his  com- 
edies, his  subject  was  the  "  spongy  humors  of  the 
time,"  that  is,  the  fashionable  affectations,  the  whims, 
oddities,  and  eccentric  developments  of  London 
life.  His  procedure  was  to  bring  together  a  num- 
ber of  these  fantastic  humorists,  to  play  them  off 
upon  each  other,  involve  them  in  all  manner  of 
comical  misadventures,  and  render  them  utterly  ri- 
diculous and  contemptible.  There  was  thus  a  per- 
ishable element  in  his  art,  for  manners  change;  and 
however  effective  this  exposure  of  contemporary 
affectations  may  have  been,  before  an  audience  of 
Jonson's  day,  it  is  as  hard  for  a  modern  reader  to 
detect  his  points  as  it  will  be  for  a  reader  two  hun- 
dred years  hence  to  understand  the  satire  upon  the 
aesthetic  craze  in  such  pieces  of  the  present  day,  as 
Patience  or  the  Colonel.  Nevertheless,  a  patient 
reader,  with  the  help  of  copious  foot-notes,  can  grad- 
ually put  together  for  himself  an  image  of  that  world 
of  obsolete  humors  in  which  Jonson's  comedy 
dwells,  and  can  admire  the  dramatist's  solid  good 


n8  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

sense,  his  great  learning,  his  skill  in  construction, 
and  the  astonishing  fertility  of  his  invention.  His 
characters  are  not  revealed  from  within,  like  Shaks- 
pere's,  but  built  up  painfully  from  outside  by  a  suc- 
cession of  minute,  laborious  particulars.  The  dif- 
ference will  be  plainly  manifest  if  such  a  character 
as  Slender,  in  the  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor,  be  com- 
pared with  any  one  of  the  inexhaustible  variety  of 
idiots  in  Jonson's  plays  ;  with  Master  Stephen,  for 
example,  in  Every  Man  in  his  Humor  j  or,  if  Fal- 
staff  be  put  side  by  side  with  Captain  Bobadil,  in 
the  same  comedy,  perhaps  Jonson's  masterpiece  in 
the  way  of  comic  caricature.  Cynthia's  Revels  was 
a  satire  on  the  courtiers  and  the  Poetaster  on  Jon- 
son's literary  enemies.  The  Alchemist  was  an  ex- 
posure of  quackery,  and  is  one  of  his  best  comedies, 
but  somewhat  overweighted  with  learning.  Volpone 
is  the  most  powerful  of  all  his  dramas,  but  is  a  harsh 
and  disagreeable  piece;  and  the  state  of  society 
which  it  depicts  is  too  revolting  for  comedy.  The 
Silent  Woman  is,  perhaps,  the  easiest  of  all  Jonson's 

•  plays  for  a  modern  reader  to  follow  and  appreciate. 
There  is  a  distinct  plot  to  it,  the  situation  is  ex- 
tremely ludicrous,  and  the  emphasis  is  laid  upon  a 
single  humor  or  eccentricity,  as  in  some  of  Moliere's 
lighter  comedies,  like  Le  Malade  Imaginaire,  or  Le 
Medecin  malgre  lui. 

In  spite  of  his  heaviness  in  drama,  Jonson  had  a 
light  enough  touch  in  lyric  poetry.  His  songs  have 
not  the  careless  sweetness  of  Shakspere's,  but  they 

•  have  a  grace  of  their  own.     Such  pieces  as  his 


THE  AGE  OF  SHAKSPERE.  119 

Love's  Triumph,  Hymn  to  Diana,  The  Noble  Mind, 
and  the  adaptation  from  Philostratus, 

"Drink  to  me  only  with  thine  eyes," 

and  many  others  entitle  their  author  to  rank  among 
the  first  English  lyrists.  Some  of  these  occur  in. 
his  two- collections  of  miscellaneous  verse,  the  For- 
est and  Underwoods;  others  in  the  numerous 
masques  which  he  composed.  These  were  a  spe- 
cies of  entertainment,  very  popular  at  the  court  of 
James  I.,  combining  dialogue  with  music,  intricate 
dances,  and  costly  scenery.  Jonson  left  an  unfin- 
ished pastoral  drama,  the  Sad  Shepherd,  which, 
though  not  equal  to  Fletcher's  Faithful  Shepherdess, 
contains  passages  of  great  beauty,  one,  especially, 
descriptive  of  the  shepherdess 

"  Earine, 

Who  had  her  very  being  and  her  name 
With  the  first  buds  and  breathings  of  the  spring, 
Born  with  the  primrose  and  the  violet 
And  earliest  roses  blown." 

1.  Ward's    History  of    English   Dramatic    Lit- 
erature. 

2.  Palgrave's   Golden    Treasury    of    Songs  and 
Lyrics. 

3.  The  Courtly  Poets   from   Raleigh  to   Mont- 
rose.     Edited  by  J.  Hannah. 

4.  Sir  Philip  Sidney's  Arcadia.     (First  and  Sec- 
ond Books.) 

5.  Bacon's  Essays.    Edited  by  W.  Aldis  Wright 


i2o  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

6.  The  Cambridge  Shakspere.  [Clark  &  Wright.] 

7.  Charles  Lamb's  Specimens  of  English   Dra- 
matic Poets. 

8.  Ben   Jonson's  Volpone   and   Silent  Woman. 
(Cunningham's  or  Gifford's  Edition.) 


THE  AGE  OF  MILTON.  121 


CHAPTER  IV. 
THE  AGE  OF  MILTON. 

1608-1674. 

L*  THE  Elisabethan  age  proper  closed  with  the 
death  of  the  queen,  and  the  accession  of  James  I., 
in  1603,  but  the  literature  of  the  fifty  years  follow- 
ing was  quite  as  rich  as  that  of  the  half-century 
that  had  passed  since  she  came  to  the  throne,  in 
1557.  The  same  qualities  of  thought  and  style 
which  had  marked  the  writers  of  her  reign,  pro- 
longed themselves  in  their  successors,  through  the 
reigns  of  the  first  two  Stuart  kings  and  the  Com- 
monwealth. Yet  there  was  a  change  in  spirit. 
Literature  is  only  one  of  the  many  forms  in  which 
the  national  mind  expresses  itself.  In  periods 
of  political  revolution,  literature,  leaving  the  se- 
rene air  of  fine  art,  partakes  the  violent  agitation 
of  the  times.  There  were  seeds  of  civil  and  relig- 
ious discord  in  Elisabethan  England.  As  between 
the  two  parties  in  the  Church  there  was  a  compro- 
mise and  a  truce  rather  than  a  final  settlement. 
The  Anglican  doctrine  was  partly  Calvinistic  and 
partly  Arminian.  The  form  of  government  was 
Episcopal,  but  there  was  a  large  body  of  Presby- 
terians in  the  Church  who  desired  a  change.  In 


122  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

the  ritual  and  ceremofiies  many  "  rags  of  poperty  " 
had  been  retained,  which  the  extreme  reformers 
wished  to  tear  away.  But  Elisabeth  was  a  worldly- 
minded  woman,  impatient  of  theological  disputes. 
Though  circumstances  had  made  her  the  champion 
of  Protestantism  in  Europe,  she  kept  many  Catholic 
notions,  disapproved,  for  example,  of  the  marriage 
of  priests,  and  hated  sermons.  She  was  jealous  of 
her  prerogative  in  the  State,  and  in  the  Church  she 
enforced  uniformity.  The  authors  of  the  Martin 
Marprelate  pamphlets  against  the  bishops,  were 
punished  by  death  or  imprisonment.  While  the 
queen  lived  things  were  kept  well  together  and  En- 
gland was  at  one  in  face  of  the  common  foe.  Ad- 
miral Howard,  who  commanded  the  English  naval 
forces  against  the  Armada,  was  a  Catholic. 

But  during  the  reigns  of  James  I.  (1603-1625) 
and  Charles  I.  (1625-1649)  Puritanism  grew  strong- 
er through  repression.  "England,"  says  the  his- 
torian Green,  "became  the  people  of  a  book,  and 
that  book  the  Bible."  The  power  of  the  king  was 
used  to  impose  the  power  of  the  bishops  upon  the 
English  and  Scotch  Churches  until  religious  dis- 
content became  also  political  discontent,  and 
finally  overthrew  the  throne.  The  writers  of  this 
period  divided  more  and  more  into  two  hostile 
camps.  On  the  side  of  Church  and  king  was 
the  bulk  of  the  learning  and  genius  of  the  time. 
But  on  the  side  of  free  religion  and  the  Parliament 
were  the  stern  conviction,  the  fiery  zeal,  the  ex- 
alted imagination  of  English  Puritanism.  The- 


THE  AGE  OF  MILTON.  123 

spokesman  of  this  movement  was  Milton,  whose 
great  figure  dominates  the  literary  history  of  his 
generation,  as  Shakspere's  does  of  the  generation 
preceding. 

The  drama  went  on  in  the  course  marked  out 
for  it  by  Shakspere's  example,  until  the  theaters 
were  closed  by  Parliament,  in  1642.  Of  the  Stuart 
dramatists,  the  most  important  were  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher,  all  of  whose  plays  were  produced  during 
the  reign  of  James  I.  These  were  fifty-three  in 
number,  but  only  thirteen  of  them  were  joint  pro- 
ductions. Francis  Beaumont  was  twenty  years 
younger  than  Shakspere,  and  died  a  few  years  be- 
fore him.  He  was  the  son  of  a  judge  of  the  Com- 
mon Pleas.  His  collaborator,  John  Fletcher,  a 
son  of  the  bishop  of  London,  was  five  years  older 
than  Beaumont,  and  survived  him  nine  years.  He 
was  much  the  more  prolific  of  the  two  and  wrote 
alone  some  forty  plays.  Although  the  life  of  one 
of  these  partners  was  conterminous  with  Shaks- 
pere's, their  works  exhibit  a  later  phase  of  the 
dramatic  art.  The  Stuart  dramatists  followed  the 
lead  of  Shakspere  rather  than  of  Ben  Jonson. 
Their  plays,  like  the  former's,  belong  to  the  ro- 
mantic drama.  They  present  a  poetic  and  ideal- 
ized version  of  life,  deal  with  the  highest  passions 
and  the  wildest  buffoonery,  and  introduce  a  great 
variety  of  those  daring  situations  and  incidents 
which  we  agree  to  call  romantic.  But  while  Shaks- 
pere seldom  or  never  overstepped  the  modesty  of 
nature,  his  successors  ran  into  every  license.  They 


124  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

sought  to  stimulate  the  jaded  appetite  of  their 
audience  by  exhibiting  monstrosities  of.  character, 
unnatural  lusts,  subtleties  of  crime,  virtues  and 
vices  both  in  excess. 

Beaumont  and  Fletcher's  plays  are  much  easier 
and  more  agreeable  reading  than  Ben  Jonson's. 
Though  often  loose  in  their  plots  and  without  that 
consistency  in  the  development  of  their  characters 
which  distinguished  Jonson's  more  conscientious 
workmanship,  they  are  full  of  graceful  dialogue 
and  beautiful  poetry.  Dryden  said  that  after  the 
Restoration  two  of  their  plays  were  acted  for  one 
of  Shakspere's  or  Jonson's  throughout  the  year, 
and  he  added,  that  they  "  understood  and  imitated 
the  conversation  of  gentlemen  much  better,  whose 
wild  debaucheries  and  quickness  of  wit  in  repar- 
tees no  poet  can  ever  paint  as  they  have  done." 
Wild  debauchery  was  certainly  not  the  mark  of  a 
gentleman  in  Shakspere,  nor  was  it  altogether  so 
in  Beaumont  and  Fletcher.  Their  gentlemen  are 
gallant  and  passionate  lovers,  gay  cavaliers,  gen- 
erous, courageous,  courteous — according  to  the 
fashion  of  their  times — and  sensitive  on  the  point 
of  honor.  They  are  far  superior  to  the  cold- 
blooded rakes  of  Dryden  and  the  Restoration 
comedy.  Still  the  manners  and  language  in  Beau- 
mont and  Fletcher's  plays  are  extremely  licentious, 
and  it  is  not  hard  to  sympathize  with  the  objec- 
tions to  the  theater  expressed  by  the  Puritan 
writer,  William  Prynne,  who,  after  denouncing  the 
long  hair  of  the  cavaliers  in  his  tract,  The  Unlove- 


THE  AGE  OF  MILTON.  125 

liness  of  Lovelocks,  attacked  the  stage,  in  1633,  with 
Histrio-mastix :  the  Player  s  Scourge ;  an  offense 
for  which  he  was  fined,  imprisoned,  pilloried,  and 
had  his  ears  cropped.  Coleridge  said  that  Shaks- 
pere  was  coarse,  but  never  gross.  He  had  the 
healthy  coarseness  of  nature  herself.  But  Beau- 
mont and  Fletcher's  pages  are  corrupt.  Even 
their  chaste  women  are  immodest  in  language  and 
thought.  They  use  not  merely  that  frankness  of 
speech  which  was  a  fashion  of  the  times,  but  9 
profusion  of  obscene  imagery  which  could  not  pro- 
ceed from  a  pure  mind.  Chastity  with  them  is 
father  a  bodily  accident  than  a  virtue  of  the  heart, 
says  Coleridge. 

Among  the  best  of  their  light  comedies  are  The 
Chances,  The  Scornful  Lady,  The  Spanish  Curate, 
and  Rule  a  Wife  and  Have  a  Wife.  But  far 
superior  to  these  are  their  tragedies  and  tragi- 
comedies, The  Maias  Tragedy,  Philaster,  A  King 
and  No  King — all  written  jointly — and  Valen- 
tinian  and  Thierry  and  Theodoret,  written  by 
Fletcher  alone,  but  perhaps,  in  part,  sketched  out 
by  Beaumont.  The  tragic  masterpiece  of  Beau- 
mont and  Fletcher  is  The  Maid's  Tragedy,  a  pow- 
erful but  repulsive  play,  which  sheds  a  singular 
light  not  only  upon  its  authors'  dramatic  methods, 
but  also  upon  the  attitude  toward  royalty  favored 
by  the  doctrine  of  the  divine  right  of  kings,  which 
grew  up  under  the  Stuarts.  The  heroine,  Evadne, 
has  been  in  secret  a  mistress  of  the  king,  who  mar 
ries  her  to  Amintor,  a  gentleman  of  his  court,  be- 


126  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

cause,  as  she  explains  to  her  bridegroom,  on  the 

wedding  night, 

"  I  must  have  one 

To  father  children,  and  to  bear  the  name 
Of  husband  to  me,  that  my  sin  may  be 
More  honorable." 

This  scene  is,  perhaps,  the  most  affecting  and 
impressive  in  the  whole  range  of  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher's  drama.  Yet  when  Evadne  names  the 
king  as  her  paramour,  Amintor  exclaims: 

"  O  thou  hast  named  a  word  that  wipes  away 
All  thoughts  revengeful.     In  that  sacred  name 
'  The  king '  there  lies  a  terror.     What  frail  man 
Dares  lift  his  hand  against  it?     Let  the  gods 
Speak  to  him  when  they  please  ;  till  when,  let  us 
Suffer  and  wait." 

And  the  play  ends  with  the  words 

"  On  lustful  kings, 

Unlooked-for  sudden  deaths  from  heaven  are  sent, 
But  cursed  is  he  that  is  their  instrument." 

Aspatia,  in  this  tragedy,  is  a  good  instance  of 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher's  pathetic  characters.  She 
is  troth-plight  wife  to  Amintor,  and  after  he,  by 
the  king's  command,  has  forsaken  her  for  Evadne, 
she  disguises  herself  as  a  man,  provokes  her  un- 
faithful lover  to  a  duel,  and  dies  under  his  sword, 
blessing  the  hand  that  killed  her.  This  is  a  com- 
mon type  in  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  and  was 
drawn  originally  from  Shakspere's  Ophelia.  All 
their  good  women  have  the  instinctive  fidelity  of 
a  dog,  and  a  superhuman  patience  and  devotion. 


THE  AGE  OF  MILTON.  127 

a  "  gentle  forlornness "  under  wrongs,  which  is 
painted  with  an  almost  feminine  tenderness.  In 
Philaster,  or  Love  Lies  Bleeding,  Euphrasia,  con- 
ceiving a  hopeless  passion  for  Philaster — who  is  in 
love  with  Arethusa — puts  on  the  dress  of  a  page 
and  enters  his  service.  He  employs  her  to  carry 
messages  to  his  lady-love,  just  as  Viola,  in  Twelfth 
Night,  is  sent  by  the  Duke  to  Olivia.  Philaster  is 
persuaded  by  slanderers  that  his  page  and  his  lady 
have  been  unfaithful  to  him,  and  in  his  jealous 
fury  he  wounds  Euphrasia  with  his  sword.  After- 
ward, convinced  of  the  boy's  fidelity,  he  asks  for- 
giveness, whereto  Euphrasia  replies, 

"  Alas,  my  lord,  my  life  is  not  a  thing 
Worthy  your  noble  thoughts.     "Pis  not  a  life, 
'Tis  but  a  piece  of  childhood  thrown  away." 

Beaumont  and  Fletcher's  love-lorn  maids  wear  the 
willow  very  sweetly,  but  in  all  their  piteous  pas- 
sages there  is  nothing  equal  to  the  natural  pathos — 
the  pathos  which  arises  from  the  deep  springs  of 
character — of  that  one  brief  question  and  answer 
in  King  Lear. 

"  Lear.  So  young  and  so  untender  ? 

"  Cordelia.  So  young,  my  lord,  and  true." 

The  disguise  of  a  woman  in  man's  apparel  is  a 
common  incident  in  the  romantic  drama  ;  and  the 
fact,  that  on  the  Elisabethan  stage  the  female 
parts  were  taken  by  boys,  made  the  deception 
easier.  Viola's  situation  in  Twelfth  Night  is  pre- 
cisely similiar  to  Euphrasia's,  but  there  is  a  differ- 


ia8  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

ence  in  the  handling  of  the  device  which  is  char- 
acteristic  of  a  distinction  between  Shakspere's  art 
and  that  of  his  contemporaries.  The  audience  in 
Twelfth  Night  is  taken  into  confidence  and  made 
aware  of  Viola's  real  nature  from  the  start,  while 
Euphrasia's  incognito  is  preserved  till  the  fifth  act, 
and  then  disclosed  by  an  accident.  This  kind  of 
mystification  and  surprise  was  a  trick  below 
Shakspere.  In  this  instance,  moreover,  it  involved 
a  departure  from  dramatic  probability.  Euphrasia 
could,  at  any  moment,  by  revealing  her  identity, 
have  averted  the  greatest  sufferings  and  dangers 
from  Philaster,  Arethusa,  and  herself,  and  the 
only  motive  for  her  keeping  silence  is  represented 
to  have  been  a  feeling  of  maidenly  shame  at  her 
position.  Such  strained  and  fantastic  motives  are 
too  often  made  the  pivot  of  the  action  in  Beau- 
mont and  Fletcher's  tragi-comedies.  Their  char- 
acters have  not  the  depth  and  truth  of  Shakspere's, 
nor  are  they  drawn  so  sharply.  One  reads  their 
plays  with  pleasure  and  remembers  here  and  there 
a  passage  of  fine  poetry,  or  a  noble  or  lovely  trait. 
But  their  characters,  as  wholes,  leave  a  fading  im- 
pression. Who,  even  after  a  single  reading  or 
representation,  ever  forgets  Falstaff,  or  Shylock,  or 
King  Lear? 

The  moral  inferiority  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher 
is  well  seen  in  such  a  play  as  A  King  and  No  King, 
Here  Arbaces  falls  in  love  with  his  sister,  and,  after 
a  furious  conflict  in  his  own  mind,  finally  suc- 
cumbs to  his  guilty  passion.  He  is  rescued  from 


THE  AGE  OF  MILTON.  129 

the  consequences  of  his  weakness  by  the  dis- 
covery that  Panthea  is  not,  in  fact,  his  sister.  But 
this  is  to  cut  the  knot  and  not  to  untie  it.  It 
leaves  the  denouement  to  chance,  and  not  to  those 
moral  forces  through  which  Shakspere  always 
wrought  his  conclusions.  Arbaces  has  failed,  and 
the  piece  of  luck  which  keeps  his  failure  innocent 
is  rejected  by  every  right-feeling  spectator.  In 
one  of  John  Ford's  tragedies,  the  situation  which 
in  A  King  and  No  King  is  only  apparent,  becomes 
real,  and  incest  is  boldly  made  the  subject  of  the 
play.  Ford  pushed  the  morbid  and  unnatural  in 
character  and  passion  into  even  wilder  extremes 
than  Beaumont  and  Fletcher.  His  best  play,  the 
Broken  Heart,  is  a  prolonged  and  unrelieved  tort- 
ure of  the  feelings. 

Fletcher's  Faithful  Shepherdess  is  the  best  En- 
glish pastoral  drama.  Its  choral  songs  are  richly 
and  sweetly  modulated,  and  the  influence  of  the 
whole  poem  upon  Milton  is  very  apparent  in  his 
Comus.  The  Knight  of  the  Burning  Pestle,  writ- 
ten by  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  jointly,  was  the 
first  burlesque  comedy  in  the  language,  and  is  ex- 
cellent fooling.  Beaumont  and  Fletcher's  blank 
verse  is  musical,  but  less  masculine  than  Mar- 
lowe's or  Shakspere's,  by  reason  of  their  excessive 
use  of  extra  syllables  and  feminine  endings. 

In  John  Webster  the  fondness  for  the  abnormal 
and  sensational  themes,  which  beset  the  Stuart 
stage,  showed  itself  in  the  exaggeration  of  the  ter- 
rible into  the  horrible.  Fear,  in  Shakspere — as  in 
9 


130  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

the  great  murder  scene  in  Macbeth — is  a  pure  pas- 
sion; but  in  Webster  it  is  mingled  with  some- 
thing physically  repulsive.  Thus  his  Duchess  of 
Malfi  is  presented  in  the  dark  with  a  dead  man's 
hand,  and  is  told  that  it  is  the  hand  of  her  mur- 
dered husband.  She  is  shown  a  dance  of  mad- 
men and,  "  behind  a  traverse,  the  artificial  figures  of 
her  children,  appearing  as  if  dead."  Treated  in 
this  elaborate  fashion,  that  "terror,"  which  Aris- 
totle said  it  was  one  of  the  objects  of  tragedy  to 
move,  loses  half  its  dignity.  Webster's  images 
have  the  smell  of  the  charnel  house  about  them. 

"  She  would  not  after  the  report  keep  fresh 
As  long  as  flowers  on  graves." 
"  We  are  only  like  dead  walls  or  vaulted  graves, 
That,  ruined,  yield  no  echo, 

O  this  gloomy  world  ! 
In  what  a  shadow  or  deep  pit  of  darkness 
Doth  womanish  and  fearful  mankind  live  ! " 

Webster  had  an  intense  and  somber  genius.  In 
diction  he  was  the  most  Shaksperian  of  the 
Elisabethan  dramatists,  and  there  are  sudden 
gleams  of  beauty  among  his  dark  horrors,  which 
light  up  a  whole  scene  with  some  abrupt  touch  of 
feeling. 

"  Cover  her  face  :  mine  eyes  dazzle  :  she  died  young,*' 

says  the  brother  of  the  Duchess,  when  he  has  pro- 
cured her  murder  and  stands  before  the  corpse. 
Vittoria  Corombona  is  described  in  the  old  edi- 
tions as  "  a  night-piece,"  and  it  should,  indeed,  be 


THE  AGE  OF  MILTON.  131 

acted  by  the  shuddering  light  of  torches,  and  with 
the  cry  of  the  screech-owl  to  punctuate  the  speeches. 
The  scene  of  Webster's  two  best  tragedies  was 
laid,  like  many  of  Ford's,  Cyril  Tourneur's,  and 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher's,  in  Italy — the  wicked 
and  splendid  Italy  of  the  Renaissance,  which  had 
such  a  fascination  for  the  Elisabethan  imagina- 
tion. It  was  to  them  the  land  of  the  Borgias  and 
the  Cenci;  of  families  of  proud  noble's,  luxurious, 
cultivated,  but  full  of  revenges  and  ferocious  cun- 
ning; subtle  poisoners,  who  killed  with  a  perfumed 
glove  or  fan;  parricides,  atheists,  committers  of 
unnamable  crimes,  and  inventors  of  strange  and 
delicate  varieties  of  sin. 

But  a  very  few  have  here  been  mentioned  of  the 
great  host  of  dramatists  who  kept  the  theaters  busy 
through  the  reigns  of  Elisabeth,  James  I.,  and 
Charles  I.  The  last  of  the  race  was  James  Shirley, 
who  died  in  1666,  and  whose  thirty-eight  plays 
were  written  during  the  reign  of  Charles  I.  and 
the  Commonwealth. 

In  the  miscellaneous  prose  and  poetry  of  this 
period  there  is  lacking  the  free,  exulting,  creative 
impulse  of  the  elder  generation,  but  there  is  a  so- 
berer feeling  and  a  certain  scholarly  choiceness 
which  commend  themselves  to  readers  of  bookish 
tastes.  Even  that  quaintness  of  thought,  which  is 
a  mark  of  the  Commonwealth  writers,  is  not  with- 
out its  attraction  for  a  nice  literary  palate.  Prose 
became  now  of  greater  relative  importance  than 
ever  before.  Almost  every  distinguished  writer  of 


132  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

the  time  lent  his  pen  to  one  or  the  other  party  in 
the  great  theological  and  political  controversy  of 
the  time.  There  were  famous  theologians,  like 
Hales,  Chillingworth,  and  Baxter;  historians  and 
antiquaries,  like  Selden,  Knolles,  and  Cotton;  phi- 
losophers, such  as  Hobbes,  Lord  Herbert  of 
Cherbury,  and  More,  the  Platonist;  and  writers  in 
natural  science — which  now  entered  upon  its  mod- 
ern, experimental  phase,  under  the  stimulus  of 
Bacon's  writings — among  whom  may  be  mentioned 
Wallis,  the  mathematician;  Boyle,  the  chemist,  and 
Harvey,  the  discoverer  of  the  circulation  of  the 
blood.  These  are  outside  of  our  subject,  but  in 
the  strictly  literary  prose  of  the  time,  the  same 
spirit  of  roused  inquiry  is  manifest,  and  the  same 
disposition  to  a  thorough  and  exhaustive  treatment 
of  a  subject  which  is  proper  to  the  scientific  atti- 
tude of  mind.  The  line  between  true  and  false 
science,  however,  had  not  yet  been  drawn.  The 
age  was  pedantic,  and  appealed  too  much  to  the 
authority  of  antiquity.  Hence  we  have  such  monu- 
ments of  perverse  and  curious  erudition  as  Robert 
Burton's  Anatomy  of  Melancholy,  1621;  and  Sir 
Thomas  Browne's  Pseudodoxia  Epidemica,m  Inqui- 
ries into  Vulgar  and  Common  Errors,  1646.  The 
former  of  these  was  the  work  of  an  Oxford  scholar, 
an  astrologer,  who  cast  his  own  horoscope,  and  a 
victim  himself  of  the  atrabilious  humor,  from  which 
he  sought  relief  in  listening  to  the  ribaldry  of  barge- 
men, and  in  compiling  this  Anatomy,  in  which  the 
causes,  symptoms,  prognostics,  and  cures  of  melan- 


THE  AGE  OF  MILTON.  133 

choly  are  considered  in  numerous  partitions,  sec- 
tions, members,  and  subsections.  The  work  is  a 
mosaic  of  quotations.  All  literature  is  ransacked 
for  anecdotes  and  instances,  and  the  book  has  thus 
become  a  mine  of  out-of-the-way  learning,  in  which 
later  writers  have  dug.  Lawrence  Sterne  helped 
himself  freely  to  Burton's  treasures,  and  Dr.  John- 
son said  that  the  Anatomy  was  the  only  book  that 
ever  took  him  out  of  bed  two  hours  sooner  than  he 
wished  to  rise. 

The  vulgar  and  common  errors  which  Sir  Thomas 
Browne  set  himself  to  refute,  were  such  as  these  : 
That  dolphins  are  crooked,  that  Jews  stink,  that  a 
man  hath  one  rib  less  than  a  woman,  that  Xerxes's 
army  drank  up  rivers,  that  cicades  are  bred  out  of 
cuckoo-spittle,  that  Hannibal  split  Alps  with  vin- 
egar, together  with  many  similar  fallacies  touching 
Pope  Joan,  the  Wandering  Jew,  the  decuman  or 
tenth  wave,  the  blackness  of  negroes,  Friar  Bacon's 
brazen  head,  etc.  Another  book  in  which  great 
learning  and  ingenuity  were  applied  to  trifling 
ends,  was  the  same  author's  Garden  of  Cyrus;  or,  the 
Quincuncial  Lozenge  or  Network  Plantations  of  the 
Ancients,  in  which  a  mystical  meaning  is  sought  in 
the  occurrence  throughout  nature  and  art  of  the 
figure  of  the  quincunx  or  lozenge.  Browne  was  a 
physician  of  Norwich,  where  his  library,  museum, 
aviary,  and  botanic  garden  were  thought  worthy  of 
a  special  visit  by  the  Royal  Society.  He  was  an 
antiquary  and  a  naturalist,  and  deeply  read  in  the 
schoolmen  and  the  Christian  fathers.  He  was 


134  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

a  mystic,  and  a  writer  of  a  rich  and  peculiar  imag- 
ination, whose  thoughts  have  impressed  them- 
selves upon  many  kindred  minds,  like  Cole- 
ridge, De  Quincey,  and  Emerson.  Two  of  his 
books  belong  to  literature,  Religio  Medici,  published 
in  1642,  and  Hydriotaphia;  or,  Urn  Burial,  1658, 
a  discourse  upon  rites  of  burial  and  incremation, 
suggested  by  some  Roman  funeral  urns,  dug  up  in 
Norfolk.  Browne's  style,  though  too  highly  Latin- 
ized, is  a  good  example  of  Commonwealth  prose, 
that  stately,  cumbrous,  brocaded  prose,  which  had 
something  of  the  flow  and  measure  of  verse,  rather 
than  the  quicker,  colloquial  movement  of  modern 
writing.  Browne  stood  aloof  from  the  disputes  of 
his  time,  and  in  his  very  subjects  there  is  a  calm 
and  meditative  remoteness  from  the  daily  interests 
of  men.  His  Religio  Medici  is  full  of  a  wise  toler- 
ance and  a  singular  elevation  of  feeling.  "  At  the 
sight  of  a  cross,  or  crucifix,  I  can  dispense  with  my 
hat,  but  scarce  with  the  thought  or  memory  of  my 
Saviour."  "  They  only  had  the  advantage  of  a 
bold  and  noble  faith,  who  lived  before  his  coming." 
"  They  go  the  fairest  way  to  heaven,  that  would 
serve  God  without  a  hell."  "  All  things  are  arti- 
ficial, for  Nature  is  the  art  of  God."  The  last 
chapter  of  the  Urn  Burial  is  an  almost  rithmical 
descant  on  mortality  and  oblivion.  The  style 
kindles  slowly  into  a  somber  eloquence.  It  is  the 
most  impressive  and  extraordinary  passage  in  the 
prose  literature  of  the  time.  Browne,  like  Ham- 
let, loved  to  "  consider  too  curiously."  His  subtlety 


THE  AGE  OF  MILTON.  135 

led  him  to  "  pose  his  apprehension  with  those  in- 
volved enigmas  and  riddles  of  the  Trinity — with  in- 
carnation and  resurrection;  "  and  to  start  odd  in- 
quiries; "what  song  the  Syrens  sang,  or  what  name 
Achilles  assumed  when  he  hid  himself  among 
women;"  or  whether,  after  Lazarus  was  raised 
from  the  dead,  "  his  heir  might  lawfully  detain  his 
inheritance."  The  quaintness  of  his  phrase  ap- 
pears at  every  turn.  "  Charles  the  Fifth  can  never 
hope  to  live  within  two  Methuselahs  of  Hector." 
"  Generations  pass,  while  some  trees  stand,  and  old 
families  survive  not  three  oaks."  "  Mummy  is  be- 
come merchandise;  Mizraim  cures  wounds,  and 
Pharaoh  is  sold  for  balsams." 

One  of  the  pleasantest  of  old  English  humorists 
is  Thomas  Fuller,  who  was  a  chaplain  in  the  royal 
army  during  the  civil  war,  and  wrote,  among  other 
things,  a  Church  History  of  Britain;  a  book  of  re- 
ligious meditations,  Good  Thoughts  in  Bad  Times, 
and  a  "  character  "  book,  The  Holy  and  Profane 
State.  His  most  important  work,  the  Worthies  of 
England,  was  published  in  1662,  the  year  after  his 
death.  This  was  a  description  of  every  English 
county;  its  natural  commodities,  manufactures, 
wonders,  proverbs,  etc.,  with  brief  biographies  of 
its  memorable  persons.  Fuller  had  a  well-stored 
memory,  sound  piety,  and  excellent  common  sense. 
Wit  was  his  leading  intellectual  trait,  and  the 
quaintness  which  he  shared  with  his  contemporaries 
appears  in  his  writings  in  a  fondness  for  puns,  droll 
turns  of  expressions,  and  bits  of  eccentric  sugges 


136  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

tion.  His  prose,  unlike  Browne's,  Milton's,  and 
Jeremy  Taylor's,  is  brief,  simple,  and  pithy.  His 
dry  vein  of  humor  was  imitated  by  the  American 
Cotton  Mather,  in  his  Magnalia,  and  by  many  of 
the  English  and  New  England  divines  of  the  iyth 
century. 

Jeremy  Taylor  was  also  a  chaplain  in  the  king's 
army,  was  several  times  imprisoned  for  his  opinions, 
and  was  afterward  made,  by  Charles  II.,  Bishop  of 
Down  and  Connor.  He  is  a  devotional  rather  than 
a  theological  writer,  and  his  Holy  Living  and  Holy 
Dying  are  religious  classics.  Taylor,  like  Sydney, 
was  a  "warbler  of  poetic  prose."  He  has  been 
called  the  prose  Spenser,  and  his  English  has  the 
opulence,  the  gentle  elaboration,  the  "  linked  sweet- 
ness long  drawn  out "  of  the  poet  of  the  Faery 
Queene.  In  fullness  and  resonance,  Taylor's  dic- 
tion resembles  that  of  the  great  orators,  though  it 
lacks  their  nervous  energy.  His  pathos  is  exqui- 
sitely tender,  and  his  numerous  similes  have  Spen- 
ser's pictorial  amplitude.  Some  of  them  have  be- 
come commonplaces  for  admiration,  notably  his 
description  of  the  flight  of  the  skylark,  and  the 
sentence  in  which  he  compares  the  gradual  awaken- 
ing of  the  human  faculties  to  the  sunrise,  which 
"first  opens  a  little  eye  of  heaven,  and  sends  away 
the  spirits  of  darkness,  and  gives  light  to  a  cock, 
and  calls  up  the  lark  to  matins,  and  by  and  by 
gilds  the  fringes  of  a  cloud,  and  peeps  over  the 
eastern  hills."  Perhaps  the  most  impressive  single 
passage  of  Taylor's  is  the  concluding  chapter  in 


THE  AGE  OF  MILTON.  137 

Holy  Dying.  From  the  midst  of  the  sickening  para- 
phernalia of  death  which  he  there  accumulates, 
rises  that  delicate  image  of  the  fading  rose,  one  of 
the  most  perfect  things  in  its  wording,  in  all  our 
prose  literature:  "But  so  have  I  seen  a  rose 
newly  springing  from  the  clefts  of  its  hood,  and  at 
first  it  was  as  fair  as  the  morning,  and  full  with  the 
dew  of  heaven  as  a  lamb's  fleece;  but  when  a  ruder 
breath  had  forced  open  its  virgin  modesty,  and 
dismantled  its  too  youthful  and  unripe  retirements, 
it  began  to  put  on  darkness  and  to  decline  to  soft- 
ness and  the  symptoms  of  a  sickly  age;  it  bowed 
the  head  and  broke  its  stock;  and  at  night,  having 
lost  some  of  its  leaves  and  all  its  beauty,  it  fell  into 
the  portion  of  weeds  and  outworn  faces." 

With  the  progress  of  knowledge  and  discussion 
many  kinds  of  prose  literature,  which  were  not  ab- 
solutely new,  now  began  to  receive  wider  exten- 
sion. Of  this  sort  are  the  Letters  from  Italy,  and 
other  miscellanies  included  in  the  Reliquice  Wot- 
toniance,  or  remains  of  Sir  Henry  Wotton,  English 
embassador  at  Venice  in  the  reign  of  James  I.,  and 
subsequently  Provost  of  Eton  College.  Also  the 
Table  Talk — full  of  incisive  remarks — left  by  John 
Selden,  whom  Milton  pronounced  the  first  scholar 
of  his  age,  and  who  was  a  distinguished  authority 
in  legal  antiquities  and  international  law,  furnished 
notes  to  Drayton's  Polyolbion,  and  wrote  upon 
Eastern  religions,  and  upon  the  Arundel  marbles. 
Literary  biography  was  represented  by  the  charm- 
ing little  Lives  of  good  old  Izaak  Walton,  the  first 


138  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

edition  of  whose  Compleat  Angler  was  printed  in 
1653.  The  lives  were  five  in  number,  of  Hooker, 
Wotton,  Donne,  Herbert,  and  Sanderson.  Several 
of  these  were  personal  friends  of  the  author,  and 
Sir  Henry  Wotton  was  a  brother  of  the  angle. 
The  Compleat  Angler,  though  not  the  first  piece  of 
sporting  literature  in  English,  is  unquestionably 
the  most  popular,  and  still  remains  a  favorite  with 
"all  that  are  lovers  of  virtue,  and  dare  trust  in 
providence,  and  be  quiet,  and  go  a-angling."  As 
in  Ascham's  Toxophilus,  the  instruction  is  con- 
veyed in  dialogue  form,  but  the  technical  part  of 
the  book  is  relieved  by  many  delightful  digres- 
sions. Piscator  and  his  pupil  Venator  pursue 
their  talk  under  a  honeysuckle  hedge  or  a  syca- 
more tree  during  a  passing  shower.  They  repair, 
after  the  day's  fishing,  to  some  honest  ale-house, 
with  lavender  in  the  window,  and  a  score  of  bal- 
lads stuck  about  the  wall,  where  they  sing  catches 
— "  old-fashioned  poetry  but  choicely  good  " — 
composed  by  the  author  or  his  friends,  drink 
barley  wine,  and  eat  their  trout  or  chub.  They 
encounter  milkmaids,  who  sing  to  them  and  give 
them  a  draft  of  the  red  cow's  milk,  and  they  never 
cease  their  praises  of  the  angler's  life,  of  rural  con- 
tentment among  the  cowslip  meadows,  and  the 
quiet  streams  of  Thames,  or  Lea,  or  Shawford 
Brook. 

The  decay  of  a  great  literary  school  is  usually 
signalized  by  the  exaggeration  of  its  characteristic 
traits.  The  manner  of  the  Elisabethan  poets  was 


THE  AGE  OF  MILTON.  139 

pushed  into  mannerism  by  their  successors.  That 
manner,  at  its  best,  was  hardly  a  simple  one,  but 
in  the  Stuart  and  Commonwealth  writers  it  be- 
came mere  extravagance.  Thus  Phineas  Fletcher 
— a  cousin  of  the  dramatist — composed  a  long 
Spenserian  allegory,  the  Purple  Island,  descriptive 
of  the  human  body.  George  Herbert  and  others 
made  anagrams  and  verses  shaped  like  an  altar,  a 
cross,  or  a  pair  of  Easter  wings.  This  group  of 
poets  was  named,  by  Dr.  Johnson,  in  his  life  of 
Cowley,  the  metaphysical  school.  Other  critics 
have  preferred  to  call  them  the  fantastic  or  con- 
ceited school,  the  later  Euphuists,  or  the  English 
Marinists  and  Gongorists,  after  the  poets  Marino 
and  Gongora,  who  brought  this  fashion  to  its  ex- 
treme in  Italy  and  in  Spain.  The  English  con- 
ceptistas  were  mainly  clergymen  of  the  established 
Church,  Donne,  Herbert,  Vaughan,  Quarles,  and 
Herrick.  But  Crashaw  was  a  Roman  Catholic, 
and  Cowley — the  latest  of  them — a  layman. 

The  one  who  set  the  fashion  was  Dr.  John  Donne, 
Dean  of  St.  Paul's,  whom  Dryden  pronounced  a 
great  wit,  but  not  a  great  poet,  and  whom  Ben 
Jonson  esteemed  the  best  poet  in  the  world  for 
some  things,  but  likely  to  be  forgotten  for  want  of 
being  understood.  Besides  satires  and  epistles  in 
verse,  he  composed  amatory  poems  in  his  youth, 
and  divine  poems  in  his  age,  both  kinds  distin- 
guished by  such  subtle  obscurity,  and  far-fetched 
ingenuities,  that  they  read  like  a  series  of  puzzles. 
When  this  poet  has  occasion  to  write  a  valediction 


140  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

to  his  mistress  upon  going  into  France,  he  com- 
pares their  temporary  separation  to  that  of  a  pair 
of  compasses: 

"  Such  wilt  thou  be  to  me,  who  must, 
Like  the  other  foot  obliquely  run  ; 

Thy  firmness  makes  my  circle  just, 
And  makes  me  end  where  I  begun." 

If  he  would  persuade  her  to  marriage  he  calls  her 
attention  to  a  flea — 

"  Me  it  sucked  first  and  now  sucks  thee, 
And  in  this  flea  oar  two  bloods  mingled  be." 

He  says  that  the  flea  is  their  marriage-temple,  and 
bids  her  forbear  to  kill  it  lest  she  thereby  commit 
murder,  suicide,  and  sacrilege  all  in  one.  Donne's 
figures  are  scholastic  and  smell  of  the  lamp.  He 
ransacked  cosmography,  astrology,  alchemy,  op- 
tics, the  canon  law,  and  the  divinity  of  the  school- 
men for  ink-horn  terms  and  similes.  He  was 
in  verse  what  Browne  was  in  prose.  He  loved 
to  play  with  distinctions,  hyperboles,  paradoxes, 
the  very  casuistry  and  dialectics  of  love  or  de- 
votion. 

"  Thou  canst  not  every  day  give  me  thy  heart : 
If  thou  canst  give  it  then  thou  never  gav'st  it : 
Love's  riddles  are  that  though  thy  heart  depart, 
It  stays  at  home  and  thou  with  losing  sav'st  it." 

Donne's  verse  is  usually  as  uncouth  as  his 
thought.  But  there  is  a  real  passion  slumbering 
under  these  ashy  heaps  of  conceit,  and  occasion- 


THE  AGE  OF  MILTON.  141 

ally  a  pure  flame  darts  up,  as  in  the  justly  admired 

lines: 

"  Her  pure  and  eloquent  blood 
Spoke  in  her  cheek  and  so  divinely  wrought 
That  one  might  almost  say  her  body  thought." 

This  description  of  Donne  is  true,  with  modifi- 
cations, of  all  the  metaphysical  poets.  They  had 
the  same  forced  and  unnatural  style.  The  or- 
dinary laws  of  the  association  of  ideas  were  re- 
versed with  them.  It  was  not  the  nearest,  but  the 
remotest,  association  that  was  called  up.  "  Their 
attempts,"  said  Johnson,  "were  always  analytic: 
they  broke  every  image  into  fragments."  The  finest 
spirit  among  them  was  "  holy  George  Herbert," 
whose  Temple  was  published  in  1631.  The  titles 
in  this  volume  were  such  as  the  following:  Christ- 
mas, Easter,  Good  Friday,  Holy  Baptism,  The 
Cross,  The  Church  Porch,  Church  Music,  The 
Holy  Scriptures,  Redemption,  Faith,  Doomsday. 
Never  since,  except,  perhaps,  in  Keble's  Christian 
Year,  have  the  ecclesiastic  ideals  of  the  Anglican 
Church — the  "  beauty  of  holiness  " — found  such 
sweet  expression  in  poetry.  The  verses  entitled 
Virtue — 

"  Sweet  day  so  cool,  so  calm,  so  bright,"  etc. 
are  known  to  most  readers,  as  well  as  the  line, 

"Who  sweeps  a  room,  as  for  thy  laws,  makes  that  and  the 
action  fine." 

The  quaintly  named  pieces,  the  Elixir,  the  Collar, 
the  Pulley,  are  full  of  deep  thought  and  spiritual 


142  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

feeling.  But  Herbert's  poetry  is  constantly  dis- 
figured by  bad  taste.  Take  this  passage  fron? 
Whitsunday, 

"  Listen,  sweet  dove,  unto  my  song, 
And  spread  thy  golden  wings  on  me, 

Hatching  my  tender  heart  so  long, 

Till  it  get  wing  and  fly  away  with  thee," 

which  is  almost  as  ludicrous  as  the  epitaph,  writteiv 
by  his  contemporary,  Carew,  on  the  daughter  of  Sir 
Thomas  Wentworth,  whose  soul 

..."  grew  so  fast  within 
It  broke  the  outward  shell  of  sin, 
And  so  was  hatched  a  cherubin." 

Another  of  these  Church  poets  was  Henry 
Vaughan,  "  the  Silurist,"  or  Welshman,  whose  fine 
piece,  the  Retreat,  has  been  often  compared 
with  Wordsworth's  Ode  on  the  Intimations  of  Im- 
mortality. Francis  Quarles'  Divine  Emblems  long 
remained  a  favorite  book  with  religious  readers, 
both  in  Old  and  New  England.  Emblem  books, 
in  which  engravings  of  a  figurative  design  were 
accompanied  with  explanatory  letterpress  in  verse, 
were  a  popular  class  of  literature  in  the  lyth  cent- 
ury. The  most  famous  of  them  all  were  Jacob 
Catt's  Dutch  emblems. 

One  of  the  most  delightful  of  English  lyric  poets 
is  Robert  Herrick,  whose  Hesperides,  1648  has 
lately  received  such  sympathetic  illustration  from 
the  pencil  of  an  American  artist,  Mr.  E.  A.  Abbey. 
Herrick  was  a  clergyman  of  the  English  Church, 


THE  AGE  OF  MILTON.  143 

and  was  expelled  by  the  Puritans  from  his  living, 
the  vicarage  of  Dean  Prior,  in  Devonshire.  The 
most  quoted  of  his  religious  poems  is,  Haw  to  Keep 
a  True  Lent.  But  it  may  be  doubted  whether  his 
tastes  were  prevailingly  clerical;  his  poetry  cer- 
tainly was  not.  He  was  a  disciple  of  Ben  Jonson 
and  his  boon  companion  at 

..."  those  lyric  feasts 
Made  at  the  Sun, 
The  Dog,  the  Triple  Tun  ; 
Where  we  such  clusters  had 
As  made  us  nobly  wild,  not  mad. 
And  yet  each  verse  of  thine 
Outdid  the  meat,  outdid  the  frolic  wine." 

Herrick's  Noble  Numbers  seldom  rises  above 
the  expression  of  a  cheerful  gratitude  and  con- 
tentment. He  had  not  the  subtlety  and  elevation 
of  Herbert,  but  he  surpassed  him  in  the  grace, 
melody,  sensuous  beauty,  and  fresh  lyrical  impulse 
of  his  verse.  The  conceits  of  the  metaphysical 
school  appear  in  Herrick  only  in  the  form  of  an 
occasional  pretty  quaintness.  He  is  the  poet  of 
English  parish  festivals,  and  of  English  flowers, 
the  primrose,  the  whitethorn,  the  daffodil.  He 
sang  the  praises  of  the  country  life,  love  songs  to 
"  Julia,"  and  hymns  of  thanksgiving  for  simple 
blessings.  He  has  been  called  the  English  Catul- 
lus, but  he  strikes  rather  the  Horatian  note  of 
Carpe  diem,  and  regret  at  the  shortness  of  life  and 
youth  in  many  of  his  best-known  poems,  such  as 


144  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

Gather  ye  Rose-buds  while  ye  may,  and  To  Corinna, 
To  Go  a  Maying. 

Abraham  Cowley  is  now  less  remembered  for 
his  poetry  than  for  his  pleasant  volume  of  Es- 
says, published  after  the  Restoration;  but  he  was 
thought  in  his  own  time  a  better  poet  than  Mil- 
ton. His  collection  of  love  songs — the  Mistress  — 
is  a  mass  of  cold  conceits,  in  the  metaphysical 
manner;  but  his  elegies  on  Crashaw  and  Harvey 
have  much  dignity  and  natural  feeling.  He  intro- 
duced the  Pindaric  ode  into  English,  and  wrote  an 
epic  poem  on  a  biblical  subject — the  Davidcis — now 
quite  unreadable.  Cowley  was  a  royalist  and  fol- 
lowed the  exiled  court  to  France.  Side  by  side  with 
the  Church  poets  were  the  cavaliers — Carew.  Waller, 
Lovelace,  Suckling,  L'Estrange,  and  others — gal- 
lant courtiers  and  officers  in  the  royal  army,  who 
mingled  love  and  loyalty  in  their  strains.  Colonel 
Richard  Lovelace,  who  lost  every  thing  in  the  king's 
service  and  was  several  times  imprisoned,  wrote 
two  famous  songs  —  To  Lucasta  on  going  to  the 
Wars — in  which  occur  the  lines, 

"  I  could  not  love  thee,  dear,  so  much. 
Loved  I  not  honor  more." 

and  To  Althaafrom  Prison,  in  which  he  sings  "  the 
sweetness,  mercy,  majesty,  and  glories  of  his  king," 
and  declares  that  "stone  walls  do  not  a  prison 
make,  nor  iron  bars  a  cage."  Another  of  the  cav- 
aliers was  sir  John  Suckling,  who  formed  a  plot  to 
rescue  the  Earl  of  Strafford,  raised  a  troop  of  horse 


THE  AGE  OF  MILTON.  145 

for  Charles  I.,  was  impeached  by  the  Parliament 
and  fled  to  France.  He  was  a  man  of  wit  and 
pleasure,  who  penned  a  number  of  gay  trifles,  but 
has  been  saved  from  oblivion  chiefly  by  his  exqui- 
site Ballad  upon  a  Wedding.  Thomas  Carew  and 
Edmund  Waller  were  poets  of  the  same  stamp- 
graceful  and  easy,  but  shallow  in  feeling.  Waller, 
who  followed  the  court  to  Paris,  was  the  author  of 
two  songs,  which  are  still  favorites,  Go,  Lovely  Rose, 
and  On  a  Girdle,  and  he  first  introduced  the  smooth 
correct  manner  of  writing  in  couplets,  which  Dryden 
and  Pope  carried  to  perfection.  Gallantry  rather 
than  love  was  the  inspiration  of  these  courtly  sing- 
ers. In  such  verses  as  Carew's  Encouragements  to 
a  Lover,  and  George  Wither's  The  Manly  Heart — 

"  If  she  be  not  so  to  me, 
What  care  I  how  fair  she  be  ?" 

we  see  the  revolt  against  the  high,  passionate,  Sid- 
neian  love  of  the  Elisabethan  sonneteers,  and  the 
note  of  persiflage  that  was  to  mark  the  lyrical  verse 
of  the  Restoration.  But  the  poetry  of  the  cavaliers 
reached  its  high-water  mark  in  one  fiery-hearted 
song  by  the  noble  and  unfortunate  James  Graham, 
Marquis  of  Montrose,  who  invaded  Scotland  in  the 
interest  of  Charles  II.,  and  was  taken  prisoner  and 
put  to  death  at  Edinburgh  in  1650. 

"  My  dear  and  only  love,  I  pray 

That  little  world  of  thee 
Be  governed  by  no  other  sway 

Than  purest  monarchy." 
10 


i4<5  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

In  language  borrowed  from  the  politics  of  the  time, 
he  cautions  his  mistress  against  synods  or  committees 
in  her  heart;  swears  to  make  her  glorious  by  his 
pen  and  famous  by  his  sword;  and  with  that  fine 
recklessness  which  distinguished  the  dashing  troop- 
ers of  Prince  Rupert,  he  adds,  in  words  that  have 
been  often  quoted, 

"  He  either  fears  his  fate  too  much, 

Or  his  deserts  are  small, 
That  dares  not  put  it  to  the  touch 
To  gain  or  lose  it  all." 

John  Milton,  the  greatest  English  poet  except 
Shakspere,  was  born  in  London  in  1608.  His  father 
was  a  scrivener,  an  educated  man,  and  a  musical 
composer  of  some  merit.  At  his  home  Milton  was 
surrounded  with  all  the  influences  of  a  refined  and 
well  ordered  Puritan  household  of  the  better  class. 
He  inherited  his  father's  musical  tastes,  and  during 
the  latter  part  of  his  life,  he  spent  a  part  of  every 
afternoon  in  playing  the  organ.  No  poet  has  writ- 
ten more  beautifully  of  music  than  Milton.  One 
of  his  sonnets  was  addressed  to  Henry  Lawes,  the 
composer,  who  wrote  the  airs  to  the  songs  in  Comus. 
Milton's  education  was  most  careful  and  thorough. 
He  spent  seven  years  at  Cambridge  where,  from  his 
personal  beauty  and  fastidious  habits,  he  was  called 
"  The  lady  of  Christ's."  At  Horton,  in  Bucking- 
hamshire, where  his  father  had  a  country  seat,  he 
passed  five  years  more,  perfecting  himself  in  his 
studies,  and  then  traveled  for  fifteen  months,  main- 


THE  AGE  OF  MILTON.  147 

ly  in  Italy,  visiting  Naples  and  Rome,  but  residing 
at  Florence.  Here  he  saw  Galileo,  a  prisoner  of 
the  Inquisition  "  for  thinking  otherwise  in  astrono- 
my than  his  Dominican  and  Franciscan  licensers 
thought."  Milton  is  the  most  scholarly  and  the 
most  truly  classical  of  English  poets.  His  Latin 
verse,  for  elegance  and  correctness,  ranks  with  Ad- 
dison's;  and  his  Italian  poems  were  the  admiration 
of  the  Tuscan  scholars.  But  his  learning  appears 
in  his  poetry  only  in  the  form  of  a  fine  and  chast- 
ened result,  and  not  in  laborious  allusion  and  pe- 
dantic citation,  as  too  often  in  Ben  Jonson,  for  in- 
stance. "  My  father,"  he  wrote,  "  destined  me, 
while  yet  a  little  child,  for  the  study  of  humane  let- 
ters." He  was  also  destined  for  the  ministry,  but, 
"  coming  to  some  maturity  of  years  and  perceiving 
what  tyranny  had  invaded  the  Church,  ...  I  thought 
it  better  to  prefer  a  blameless  silence,  before  the 
sacred  office  of  speaking,  bought  and  begun  with 
servitude  and  forswearing."  Other  hands  than 
a  bishop's  were  laid  upon  his  head.  "  He  who 
would  not  be  frustrate  of  his  hope  to  write  well 
hereafter,"  he  says,  "ought  himself  to  be  a  true 
poem."  And  he  adds  that  his  "natural  haughti- 
ness "  saved  him  from  all  impurity  of  living.  Mil- 
ton had  a  sublime  self-respect.  The  dignity  and 
earnestness  of  the  Puritan  gentleman  blended  in 
his  training  with  the  culture  of  the  Renaissance. 
Born  into  an  age  of  spiritual  conflict,  he  dedicated 
his  gift  to  the  service  of  Heaven,  and  he  became, 
like  Heine,  a  valiant  soldier  in  the  war  for  libera- 


148  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

tion.     He  was  the  poet  of  a  cause,  and  his  song 

was  keyed  to 

"  The  Dorian  mood 

Of  flutes  and  soft  recorders  such  as  raised 
To  heighth  of  noblest  temper,  heroes  old 
Arming  to  battle." 

On  comparing  Milton  with  Shakspere,  with  his  uni- 
versal sympathies  and  receptive  imagination,  one 
perceives  a  loss  in  breadth,  but  a  gain  in  intense 
personal  conviction.  He  introduced  a  new  note 
into  English  poetry,  the  passion  for  truth  and  the 
feeling  of  religious  sublimity.  Milton's  was  an 
heroic  age,  and  its  song  must  be  lyric  rather  than 
dramatic ;  its  singer  must  be  in  the  fight  and 
of  it. 

Of  the  verses  which  he  wrote  at  Cambridge,  the 
most  important  was  his  splendid  ode  On  the  Morn- 
ing of  Christ's  Nativity.  A.t  Horton  he  wrote, 
among  other  things,  the  companion  pieces,  L! Alle- 
gro and  //  Penseroso,  of  a  kind  quite  new  in  En- 
glish, giving  to  the  landscape  an  expression  in  har- 
mony with  two  contrasted  moods.  Comusy  which 
belongs  to  the  same  period,  was  the  perfection  of 
the  Elisabethan  court  masque,  and  was  presented 
at  Ludlow  Castle  in  1634,  on  the  occasion  of  the 
installation  of  the  Earl  of  Bridgewater  as  Lord 
President  of  Wales.  Under  the  guise  of  a  skillful 
addition  to  the  Homeric  allegory  of  Circe,  with 
her  cup  of  enchantment,  it  was  a  Puritan  song 
in  praise  of  chastity  and  temperance.  Lycidas,  in 
like  manner,  was  the  perfection  of  the  Elisabethan 


THE  AGE  OF  MILTON.  149 

pastoral  elegy.  It  was  contributed  to  a  volume  of 
memorial  verses  on  the  death  of  Edward  King,  a 
Cambridge  friend  of  Milton's,  who  was  drowned  in 
the  Irish  Channel  in  1637.  In  one  stern  strain, 
which  is  put  into  the  mouth  of  St.  Peter,  the  author 
"  foretells  the  ruin  of  our  corrupted  clergy,  then  at 
their  height." 

"  But  that  two-handed  engine  at  the  door 
Stands  ready  to  smite  once  and  smite  no  more." 

This  was  Milton's  last  utterance  in  English  verse 
before  the  outbreak  of  the  civil  war,  and  it 
sounds  the  alarm  of  the  impending  struggle.  In 
technical  quality  Lycidas  is  the  most  wonderful  of 
all  Milton's  poems.  The  cunningly  intricate  har- 
mony of  the  verse,  the  pressed  and  packed  lan- 
guage with  its  fullness  of  meaning  and  allusion 
make  it  worthy  of  the  minutest  study.  In  these 
early  poems,  Milton,  merely  as  a  poet,  is  at  his 
best.  Something  of  the  Elisabethan  style  still 
clings  to  them  ;  but  their  grave  sweetness,  their 
choice  wording,  their  originality  in  epithet,  name, 
and  phrase,  were  novelties  of  Milton's  own.  His 
English  masters  were  Spenser,  Fletcher,  and  Syl- 
vester, the  translator  of  Du  Bartas's  La  Semaine. 
but  nothing  of  Spenser's  prolixity,  or  Fletcher's 
effeminacy,  or  Sylvester's  quaintness  is  found  in 
Milton's  pure,  energetic  diction.  He  inherited 
their  beauties,  but  his  taste  had  been  tempered  to 
a  finer  edge  by  his  studies  in  Greek  and  Hebrew 
poetry.  He  was  the  last  of  the  Elisabethans,  and 


150  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

his  style  was  at  once  the  crown  of  the  old  and  a 
departure  into  the  new.  In  masque,  elegy,  and 
sonnet,  he  set  the  seal  to  the  Elisabethan  poetry, 
said  the  last  word,  and  closed  one  great  literary 
era. 

In  1639  the  breach  between  Charles  I.  and  his 
Parliament  brought  Milton  back  from  Italy.  "I 
thought  it  base  to  be  traveling  at  my  ease  for  amuse- 
ment, while  my  fellow-countrymen  at  home  were 
fighting  for  liberty."  For  the  next  twenty  years  he 
threw  himself  into  the  contest,  and  poured  forth  a 
succession  of  tracts,  in  English  and  Latin,  upon  the 
various  public  questions  at  issue.  As  a  political 
thinker,  Milton  had  what  Bacon  calls  "  the  humor 
of  a  scholar."  In  a  country  of  endowed  grammar 
schools  and  universities  hardly  emerged  from  a 
mediaeval  discipline  and  curriculum,  he  wanted  to 
set  up  Greek  gymnasia  and  philosophical  schools, 
after  the  fashion  of  the  Porch  and  the  Academy. 
He  would  have  imposed  an  Athenian  democracy 
upon  a  people  trained  in  the  traditions  of  mon- 
archy and  episcopacy.  At  the  very  moment  when 
England  had  grown  tired  of  the  Protectorate  and 
was  preparing  to  welcome  back  the  Stuarts,  he 
was  writing  An  Easy  and  Ready  Way  to  Establish 
a  Free  Commonwealth.  Milton  acknowledged  that 
in  prose  he  had  the  use  of  his  left  hand  only. 
There  are  passages  of  fervid  eloquence,  where 
the  style  swells  into  a  kind  of  lofty  chant,  with 
a  rithmical  rise  and  fall  to  it,  as  in  parts  of  the 
English  Book  of  Common  Prayer.  But  in  gen- 


THE  AGE  OF  MILTON.  151 

eral  his  sentences  are  long  and  involved,  full  of 
inventions  and  latinized  constructions.  Con- 
troversy at  that  day  was  conducted  on  scholastic 
lines.  Each  disputant,  instead  of  appealing  at 
once  to  the  arguments  of  expediency  and  common 
sense,  began  with  a  formidable  display  of  learning, 
ransacking  Greek  and  Latin  authors  and  the  fathers 
of  the  Church  for  opinions  in  support  of  his  own 
position.  These  authorities  he  deployed  at  tedious 
length  and  followed  them  up  with  heavy  scurrilities 
and  "excusations,"  by  way  of  attack  and  defense. 
The  dispute  between  Milton  and  Salmasius  over  the 
execution  of  Charles  I.  was  like  a  duel  between  two 
knights  in  full  armor  striking  at  each  other  with  pon- 
derous maces.  The  very  titles  of  these  pamphlets 
are  enough  to  frighten  off  a  modern  reader:  A  Con- 
futation of  the  Animadversions  upon  a  Defense  of  a, 
Humble  Remonstrance  against  a  Treatise,  entitled 
Of  Reformation.  The  most  interesting  of  Milton's 
prose  tracts  is  his  Areopagitica:  A  Speech  for  the 
Liberty  of  Unlicensed  Printing,  1644.  The  argu- 
ments in  this  are  of  permanent  force;  but  if  the 
reader  will  compare  it,  or  Jeremy  Taylor's  Liberty 
of  Prophesying,  with  Locke's  Letters  on  Toleration, 
he  will  see  how  much  clearer  and  more  convinc- 
ing is  the  modern  method  of  discussion,  intro- 
duced by  writers  like  Hobbes  and  Locke  and 
Dryden.  Under  the  Protectorate  Milton  was  ap- 
pointed Latin  Secretary  to  the  Council  of  State. 
In  the  diplomatic  correspondence  which  was  his 
official  duty,  and  in  the  composition  of  his  tract, 


152  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

Defensio  pro  Populo  Anglicano,  he  overtasked  his 
eyes,  and  in  1654  became  totally  blind.  The  only 
poetry  of  Milton's  belonging  to  the  years  1640-1660 
are  a  few  sonnets  of  the  pure  Italian  form,  mainly 
called  forth  by  public  occasions.  By  the  Elisa- 
bethans  the  sonnet  had  been  used  mainly  in  love 
poetry.  In  Milton's  hands,  said  Wordsworth,  "the 
thing  became  a  trumpet."  Some  of  his  were  ad- 
dressed to  political  leaders,  like  Fairfax,  Cromwell, 
and  Sir  Henry  Vane;  and  of  these  the  best  is,  per- 
haps, the  sonnet  written  on  the  massacre  of  the 
Vaudois  Protestants — "a  collect  in  verse,"  it  has 
been  called — which  has  the  fire  of  a  Hebrew 
prophet  invoking  the  divine  wrath  upon  the  op- 
pressors of  Israel.  Two  were  on  his  own  blind- 
ness, and  in  these  there  is  not  one  selfish  repining, 
but  only  a  regret  that  the  value  of  his  service  is 
impaired — 

"Will  God  exact  day  labor,  light  denied  ?" 

After  the  restoration  of  the  Stuarts,  in  1660, 
Milton  was  for  a  while  in  peril,  by  reason  of  the 
part  that  he  had  taken  against  the  king.  But 

"  On  evil  days  though  fallen,  and  evil  tongues, 
In  darkness  and  with  dangers  compassed  round 
And  solitude," 

he  bated  no  jot  of  heart  or  hope.  Henceforth  he 
becomes  the  most  heroic  and  affecting  figure  in 
English  literary  history.  Years  before  he  had 
planned  an  epic  poem  on  the  subject  of  King 


THE  AGE  OF  MILTON.  153 

Arthur,  and  again  a  sacred  tragedy  on  man's  fall 
and  redemption.  These  experiments  finally  took 
shape  in  Paradise  Lost,  which  was  given  to  the 
world  in  1667.  This  is  the  epic  of  English  Puri- 
tanism and  of  Protestant  Christianity.  It  was 
Milton's  purpose  to 

"  assert  eternal  Providence 
.  And  justify  the  ways  of  God  to  men," 

or,  in  other  words,  to  embody  his  theological  sys- 
tem in  verse.  This  gives  a  doctrinal  rigidity  and 
even  dryness  to  parts  of  the  Paradise  Lost,  which 
injure  its  effect  as  a  poem.  His  "  God  the  father 
turns  a  school  divine:"  his  Christ,  as  has  been 
wittily  said,  is  "  God's  good  boy:  "  the  discourses 
of  Raphael  to  Adam  are  scholastic  lectures:  Adam 
himself  is  too  sophisticated  for  the  state  of  inno- 
cence, and  Eve  is  somewhat  insipid.  The  real 
protagonist  of  the  poem  is  Satan,  upon  whose 
mighty  figure  Milton  unconsciously  bestowed  some- 
thing of  his  own  nature,  and  whose  words  of  de- 
fiance might  almost  have  come  from  some  Re- 
publican leader  when  the  Good  Old  Cause  went 
down. 

"  What  though  the  field  be  lost  ? 
All  is  not  lost,  the  unconquerable  will 
And  study  of  revenge,  immortal  hate, 
And  courage  never  to  submit  or  yield." 

But  when  all  has  been  said  that  can  be  said  in 
disparagement  or  qualification,  Paradise  Lost  re- 
mains the  foremost  of  English  poems  and  the  sub- 


154  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

limest  of  all  epics.  Even  in  those  parts  where 
theology  encroaches  most  upon  poetry,  the  diction, 
though  often  heavy,  is  never  languid.  Milton's 
blank  verse  in  itself  is  enough  to  bear  up  the  most 
prosaic  theme,  and  so  is  his  epic  English,  a  style 
more  massive  and  splendid  than  Shakspere's,  and 
comparable,  like  Tertullian's  Latin,  to  a  river  of 
molten  gold.  Of  the  countless  single  beauties 'that 
sow  his  page 

"  Thick  as  autumnal  leaves  that  strew  the  brooks 
In  Valombrosa," 

there  is  no  room  to  speak,  nor  of  the  astonishing 
fullness  of  substance  and  multitude  of  thoughts 
which  have  caused  the  Paradise  Lost  to  be  called 
the  book  of  universal  knowledge.  "  The  heat  of 
Milton's  mind,"  said  Dr.  Johnson,  "  might  be  said  to 
sublimate  his  learning  and  throw  off  into  his  work 
the  spirit  of  science,  unmingled  with  its  grosser 
parts."  The  truth  of  this  remark  is  clearly  seen 
upon  a  comparison  of  Milton's  description  of  the 
creation,  for  example,  with  corresponding  passages 
in  Sylvester's  Divine  Weeks  and  Works  (translated 
from  the  Huguenot  poet,  Du  Bartas),  which  was, 
in  some  sense,  his  original.  But  the  most  heroic 
thing  in  Milton's  heroic  poem  is  Milton.  There 
are  no  strains  in  Paradise  Lost  so  absorbing  as 
those  in  which  the  poet  breaks  the  strict  epic 
bounds  and  speaks  directly  of  himself,  as  in  the  ma- 
jestic lament  over  his  own  blindness,  and  in  the  invo- 
cation to  Urania,  which  open  the  third  and  seventh 


THE  AGE  OF  MILTON.  155 

books.  Every-where,  too,  one  reads  between  the 
lines.  We  think  of  the  dissolute  cavaliers,  as  Mil- 
ton himself  undoubtedly  was  thinking  of  them, 
when  we  read  of  "  the  sons  of  Belial  flown  with 
insolence  and  wine,"  or  when  the  Puritan  turns 
among  the  sweet  landscapes  of  Eden,  to  denounce 

"  court  amours 

Mixed  dance,  or  wanton  mask,  or  midnight  ball, 
Or  serenade  which  the  starved  lover  sings 
To  his  proud  fair,  best  quitted  with  disdain." 

And  we  think  of  Milton  among  the  triumphant 
royalists  when  we  read  of  the  Seraph  Abdiel 
"  faithful  found  among  the  faithless." 

"  Nor  number  nor  example  with  him  wrought 

To  swerve  from  truth  or  change  his  constant  mind, 

Though  single.     From  amidst  them  forth  he  passed, 

Long  way  through  hostile  scorn,  which  he  sustained 

Superior,  nor  of  violence  feared  aught: 

And  with  retorted  scorn  his  back  he  turned 

On  those  proud  towers  to  swift  destruction  doomed." 

Paradise  Regained  and  Samson  Agonistes  were 
published  in  1671.  The  first  of  these  treated  in 
four  books  Christ's  temptation  in  the  wilderness,  a 
subject  that  had  already  been  handled  in  the 
Spenserian  allegorical  manner  by  Giles  Fletcher,  a 
brother  of  the  Purple  Islander,  in  his  Christ's  Vic- 
tory and  Triumph,  1610.  The  superiority  of  Para- 
dise Lost  to  its  sequel  is  not  without  significance. 
The  Puritans  were  Old  Testament  men.  Their 
God  was  the  Hebrew  Jehovah,  whose  single  divin- 
ity the  Catholic  mythology  had  overlaid  with  the 


156  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

figures  of  the  Son,  the  Virgin  Mary,  and  the  saints. 
They  identified  themselves  in  thought  with  his 
chosen  people,  with  the  militant  theocracy  of  the 
Jews.  Their  sword  was  the  sword  of  the  Lord 
and  of  Gideon.  "To  your  tents,  O  Israel,"  was 
the  cry  of  the  London  mob  when  the  bishops  were 
committed  to  the  Tower.  And  when  the  fog  lifted, 
on  the  morning  of  the  battle  of  Dunbar,  Cromwell 
exclaimed,  "  Let  God  arise  and  let  his  enemies  be 
scattered:  like  as  the  sun  riseth,  so  shalt  thou  drive 
them  away." 

Samson  Agomstes,  though  Hebrew  in  theme  and 
in  spirit,  was  in  form  a  Greek  tragedy.  It  had 
chorus  and  semi-chorus,  and  preserved  the  so- 
called  dramatic  unities;  that  is,  the  scene  was  un- 
changed, and  there  were  no  intervals  of  time  be- 
tween the  acts.  In  accordance  with  the  rules  of 
the  Greek  theater,  but  two  speakers  appeared  upon 
the  stage  at  once,  and  there  was  no  violent  action. 
The  death  of  Samson  is  related  by  a  messenger. 
Milton's  reason  for  the  choice  of  this  subject  is 
obvious.  He  himself  was  Samson,  shorn  of  his 
strength,  blind,  and  alone  among  enemies;  given 

over 

"  to  the  unjust  tribunals,  under  change  of  times, 
And  condemnation  of  the  ungrateful  multitude." 

As  Milton  grew  older  he  discarded  more  and 
more  the  graces  of  poetry,  and  relied  purely  upon 
the  structure  and  the  thought.  In  Paradise  Lost, 
although  there  is  little  resemblance  to  Elisabethan 
work  —  such  as  one  notices  in  Comus  and  the 


THE  AGE  OF  MILTON.  157 

Christmas  hymn — yet  the  style  is  rich,  especially 
in  the  earlier  books.  But  in  Paradise  Regained 
it  is  severe  to  bareness,  and  in  Samson,  even 
to  ruggedness.  Like  Michelangelo,  with  whose 
genius  he  had  much  in  common,  Milton  became 
impatient  of  finish  or  of  mere  beauty.  He  blocked 
out  his  work  in  masses,  left  rough  places  and  sur- 
faces not  filled  in,  and  inclined  to  express  his 
meaning  by  a  symbol,  rather  than  work  it  out  in 
detail.  It  was  a  part  of  his  austerity,  his  increas- 
ing preference  for  structural  over  decorative 
methods,  to  give  up  rime  for  blank  verse.  His 
latest  poem,  Samson  Agonistes,  is  a  metrical  study 
of  the  highest  interest. 

Milton  was  not  quite  alone  among  the  poets  of 
his  time  in  espousing  the  popular  cause.  Andrew 
Marvell,  who  was  his  assistant  in  the  Latin  secre- 
taryship and  sat  in  Parliament  for  Hull,  after  the 
Restoration,  was  a  good  Republican,  and  wrote  a 
fine  Horatian  Ode  upon  Cromwell's  Return  from 
Ireland.  There  is  also  a  rare  imaginative  quality 
in  his  Song  of  the  Exiles  in  Bermuda,  Thong /its  in  a 
Garden,  and  The  Girl  Describes  her  Fawn.  George 
Wither,  who  was  imprisoned  for  his  satires,  also 
took  the  side  of  the  Parliament,  but  there  is  little 
that  is  distinctively  Puritan  in  his  poetry. 

1.  Milton's  Poetical  Works.     Edited  by   David 
Masson.     Macmillan.      s 

2.  Selections  from    Milton's   Prose.   Edited  by 
F.  D.  Myers.     (Parchment  Series.) 


158  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

3.  England's  Antiphon.    By  George  Macdonald. 

4.  Robert  Herrick's  Hesperides. 

5.  Sir   Thomas   Browne's    Religio   Medici    and 
Hydriotaphia.     Edited  by  Willis  Bund.     Sampson 
Low  &  Co.,  1873. 

6.  Thomas    Fuller's    Good   Thoughts    in   Bad 
Times. 

7.  Izaak  Walton's  Compleat  Angler. 


FROM  RESTORATION  TO  DEATH  OF  POPE.  159 


CHAPTER  V. 

FROM   THE    RESTORATION   TO   THE 
DEATH  OF  POPE. 

1660-1744, 

THE  Stuart  Restoration  was  a  period  of  descent 
from  poetry  to  prose,  from  passion  and  imagination 
to  wit  and  understanding.  The  serious,  exalted 
mood  of  the  Civil  War  and  the  Commonwealth  had 
spent  itself  and  issued  in  disillusion.  There  fol- 
lowed a  generation  of  wits,  logical,  skeptical, 
and  prosaic,  without  earnestness,  as  without  prin- 
ciple. The  characteristic  literature  of  such  a 
time  is  criticism,  satire,  and  burlesque,  and  such, 
indeed,  continued  to  be  the  course  of  English 
literary  history  for  a  century  after  the  return  of  the 
Stuarts.  The  age  was  not  a  stupid  one,  but  one  of 
active  inquiry.  The  Royal  Society,  for  the  cultiva- 
tion of  the  natural  sciences,  was  founded  in  1662. 
There  were  able  divines  in  the  pulpit  and  at  the 
universities — Barrow,  Tillotson,  Stillingfleet,  South, 
and  others:  scholars,  like  Bentley;  historians,  like 
Clarendon  and  Burnet;  scientists,  like  Boyle  and 
Newton ;  philosophers,  like  Hobbes  and  Locke. 
But  of  poetry,  in  any  high  sense  of  the  word,  there 
was  little  between  the  time  of  Milton  and  the  time 
of  Goldsmith  and  Gray. 


160  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

The  English  writers  of  this  period  were  strongly 
influenced  by  the  contemporary  literature  of  France, 
by  the  comedies  of  Moliere,  the  tragedies  of  Cor- 
neille  and  Racine,  and  the  satires,  epistles,  and  ver- 
sified essays  of  Boileau.  Many  of  the  Restoration 
writers — Waller,  Cowley,  Davenant,  Wycherley,  Vil- 
liers,  and  others — had  been  in  France  during  the 
exile,  and  brought  back  with  them  French  tastes. 
John  Dryden  (1631-1700),  who  is  the  great  literary 
figure  of  his  generation,  has  been  called  the  first 
of  the  moderns.  From  the  reign  of  Charles  II., 
indeed,  we  may  date  the  beginnings  of  modern  En- 
glish life.  What  we  call  "  society  "  was  forming,  the 
town,  the  London  world.  "  Coffee,  which  makes 
the  politician  wise,"  had  just  been  introduced,  and 
the  ordinaries  of  Ben  Jonson's  time  gave  way  to 
coffee-houses,  like  Will's  and  Button's,  which  be- 
came the  head-quarters  of  literary  and  political  gos- 
sip. The  two  great  English  parties,  as  we  know 
them  to-day,  were  organized:  the  words  Whig  and 
Tory  date  from  this  reign.  French  etiquette  and 
fashions  came  in  and  French  phrases  of  conveni- 
ence— such  as  coup  de  grace,  bel  esprit,  etc. — began 
to  appear  in  English  prose.  Literature  became  in- 
tensely urban  and  partisan.  It  reflected  city  life, 
the  disputes  of  faction,  and  the  personal  quarrels 
of  authors.  The  politics  of  the  Great  Rebellion 
had  been  of  heroic  proportions,  and  found  fitting 
expression  in  song.  But  in  the  Revolution  of  1688 
the  issues  were  constitutional  and  to  be  settled  by 
the  arguments  of  lawyers.  Measures  were  in  ques- 


FROM  RESTORATION  TO  DEATH  OF  POPE.  161 

tion  rather  than  principles,  and  there  was  little  in- 
spiration to  the  poet  in  Exclusion  Bills  and  Acts  of 
Settlement. 

Court  and  society,  in  the  reign  of  Charles  II.  and 
James  II.,  were  shockingly  dissolute,  and  in  litera- 
ture, as  in  life,  the  reaction  against  Puritanism  went 
to  great  extremes.  The  social  life  of  the  time  is 
faithfully  reflected  in  the  diary  of  Samuel  Pepys. 
He  was  a  simple-minded  man,  the  son  of  a  London 
tailor,  and  became,  himself,  secretary  to  the  admi- 
ralty. His  diary  was  kept  in  cipher,  and  published 
only  in  1825.  Being  written  for  his  own  eye,  it  is 
singularly  outspoken;  and  its  naive,  gossipy,  con- 
fidential tone  makes  it  a  most  diverting  book,  as  it 
is,  historically,  a  most  valuable  one. 

Perhaps  the  most  popular  book  of  its  time  was 
Samuel  Butler's  Hudibras  (1663-64),  a  burlesque  ro- 
mance in  ridicule  of  the  Puritans.  The  king  car- 
ried a  copy  of  it  in  his  pocket,  and  Pepys  testifies 
that  it  was  quoted  and  praised  on  all  sides.  Ridi- 
cule of  the  Puritans  was  nothing  new.  Zeal-of-the- 
land  Busy,  in  Ben  Jonson's  Bartholomew  Fair,  is  an 
early  instance  of  the  kind.  There  was  nothing 
laughable  about  the  earnestness  of  men  like  Crom- 
well, Milton,  Algernon  Sidney,  and  Sir  Henry  Vane. 
But  even  the  French  Revolution  had  its  humors; 
and  as  the  English  Puritan  Revolution  gathered 
head  and  the  extremer  sectaries  pressed  to  the 
front — Quakers,  New  Lights,  Fifth  Monarchy  Men, 
Ranters,  etc. — its  grotesque  sides  came  uppermost. 
Butler's  hero  is  a  Presbyterian  Justice  of  the  Peace 
11 


162  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

who  sallies  forth  with  his  secretary,  Ralpho — an  In- 
dependent and  Anabaptist — like  Don  Quixote  with 
Sancho  Panza,  to  suppress  May  games  and  bear- 
baitings.  (Macaulay,  it  will  be  remembered,  said 
that  the  Puritans  disapproved  of  bear-baiting,  not 
because  it  gave  pain  to  the  bear,  but  because  it 
gave  pleasure  to  the  spectators.)  The  humor  of 
Hudibras  is  not  of  the  finest.  The  knight  and 
squire  are  discomfited  in  broadly  comic  adventures, 
hardly  removed  from  the  rough,  physical  drolleries 
of  a  pantomime  or  a  circus.  The  deep  heart-laugh- 
ter of  Cervantes,  the  pathos  on  which  his  humor 
rests,  is,  of  course,  not  to  be  looked  for  in  Butler. 
But  he  had  wit  of  a  sharp,  logical  kind,  and  his 
style  surprises  with  all  manner  of  verbal  antics. 
He  is  almost  as  great  a  phrase-master  as  Pope, 
though  in  a  coarser  kind.  His  verse  is  a  smart 
doggerel,  and  his  poem  has  furnished  many  stock 
sayings,  as,  for  example, 

"  'Tis  strange  what  difference  there  can  be 
'Twixt  tweedle-dum  and  tweedle-dee." 

Hudibras  has  had  many  imitators,  not  the  least  suc- 
cessful of  whom  was  the  American  John  Trumbull, 
in  his  revolutionary  satire  M'Fingal,  some  couplets 
of  which  are  generally  quoted  as  Butler's,  as,  for 
example, 

'•  No  man  e'er  felt  the  halter  draw 
With  good  opinion  of  the  law." 

The  rebound  against  Puritanism  is  seen  no  less 
plainly  in  the  drama  of  the  Restoration,  and  the 


FROM  RESTORATION  TO  DEATH  OF  POPE.  163 

stage  now  took  vengeance  for  its  enforced  silence 
under  the  Protectorate.  Two  theaters  were  opened 
under  the  patronage,  respectively,  of  the  king  and 
of  his  brother,  the  Duke  of  York.  The  manager 
of  the  latter,  Sir  William  Davenant — who  had  fought 
on  the  king's  side,  been  knighted  for  his  services, 
escaped  to  France,  and  was  afterward  captured  and 
imprisoned  in  England  for  two  years — had  managed 
to  evade  the  law  against  stage  plays  as  early  as 
1656,  by  presenting  his  Siege  of  Rhodes  as  an  "op- 
era," with  instrumental  music  and  dialogue  in  reci- 
tative, after  a  fashion  newly  sprung  up  in  Italy. 
This  he  brought  out  again  in  1661,  with  the  dia- 
logue recast  into  riming  couplets  in  the  French 
fashion.  Movable  painted  scenery  was  now  in- 
troduced from  France,  and  actresses  took  the 
female  parts  formerly  played  by  boys.  This  last 
innovation  was  said  to  be  at  the  request  of  the 
king,  one  of  whose  mistresses,  the  famous  Nell 
Gwynne,  was  the  favorite  actress  at  the  King^s 
Theater. 

Upon  the  stage,  thus  reconstructed,  the  so-called 
"  classical "  rules  of  the  French  theater  were  fol- 
lowed, at  least  in  theory.  The  Louis  XIV.  writers 
were  not  purely  creative,  like  Shakspere  and  his 
contemporaries  in  England,  but  critical  and  self- 
conscious.  The  Academy  had  been  formed  in 
1636,  for  the  preservation  of  the  purity  of  the  French 
language,  and  discussion  abounded  on  the  prin- 
ciples and  methods  of  literary  art.  Corneille  not 
only  wrote  tragedies,  but  essays  on  tragedy,  and 


164  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

one  in  particular  on  the  Three  Unities.  Dryden 
followed  his  example  in  his  Essay  of  Dramatic 
Poesie  (1667),  in  which  he  treated  of  the  unities, 
and  argued  for  the  use  of  rime  in  tragedy  in 
preference  to  blank  verse.  His  own  practice 
varied.  Most  of  his  tragedies  were  written  in 
rime,  but  in  the  best  of  them,  All  for  Love,  1678, 
founded  on  Shakspere's  Antony  and  Cleopatra,  he 
returned  to  blank  verse.  One  of  the  principles  of 
the  classical  school  was  to  keep  comedy  and  trag- 
edy distinct.  The  tragic  dramatists  of  the  Resto- 
ration, Dryden,  Howard,  Settle,  Crowne,  Lee,  and 
others,  composed  what  they  called  "  heroic  plays," 
such  as  the  Indian  Emperor,  the  Conquest  of  Gra- 
nada, the  Duke  of  Lerma,  the  Empress  of  Morocco, 
the  Destruction  of  Jerusalem,  Nero,  and  the  Rival 
Queens.  The  titles  of  these  pieces  indicate  their 
character.  Their  heroes  were  great  historic  per- 
sonages. Subject  and  treatment  were  alike  remote 
frp.m  nature  and  real  life.  The  diction  was  stilted 
and  artificial,  and  pompous  declamation  took  the 
place  of  action  and  genuine  passion.  The  trag- 
edies of  Racine  seem  chill  to  an  Englishman 
brought  up  on  Shakspere,  but  to  see  how  great  an 
artist  Racine  was,  in  his  own  somewhat  narrow 
way,  one  has  but  to  compare  his  Phedre,  or  Iphi- 
%enie,  with  Dryden 's  ranting  tragedy  of  Tyrannic 
Love.  These  bombastic  heroic  plays  were  made 
the  subject  of  a  capital  burlesque,  the  Rehearsal, 
by  George  Villiers,  Duke  of  Buckingham,  acted  in 
1671  at  the  King's  Theater.  The  indebtedness  of 


FROM  RESTORATION  TO  DEATH  OF  POPE.  165 

the  English  stage  to  the  French  did  not  stop  with 
a  general  adoption  of  its  dramatic  methods,  but 
extended  to  direct  imitation  and  translation.  Dry- 
den's  comedy,  An  Evening's  Love,  was  adapted 
from  Thomas  Corneille's  Le  Feint  Astrologue,  and 
\\\?,  Sir  M artin  Mar-all,  from  Moliere's  UEtourdi. 
Shadwell  borrowed  his  Miser  from  Moliere,  and 
Otway  made  versions  of  Racine's  Berenice  and 
Moliere's  Fourberies  de  Scapin.  Wycherley's  Coun- 
try Wife  and  Plain  Dealer,  although  not  translations, 
were  based,  in  a  sense,  upon  Moliere's  Ecole  des 
Femmes  and  Le  Misanthrope.  The  only  one  of  the 
tragic  dramatists  of  the  Restoration  who  prolonged 
the  traditions  of  the  Elisabethan  stage,  was  Otway, 
whose  Venice  Preserved,  written  in  blank  verse,  still 
keeps  the  boards.  There  are  fine  passages  in  Dry- 
den's  heroic  plays,  passages  weighty  in  thought  and 
nobly  sonorous  in  language.  There  is  one  great 
scene  (between  Antony  and  Ventidius)  in  his  All 
for  Love.  And  one,  at  least,  of  his  comedies,  the 
Spanish  Friar,  is  skillfully  constructed.  But  his 
nature  was  not  pliable  enough  for  the  drama,  and 
he  acknowledged  that,  in  writing  for  the  stage,  he 
"forced  his  genius." 

In  sharp  contrast  with  these  heroic  plays  was  the 
comic  drama  of  the  Restoration,  the  plays  of  Wych- 
erley,  Killigrew,  Etherege,  Farquhar,  Van  Brugh, 
Congreve,  and  others;  plays  like  the  Country  Wife, 
the  Parson's  Wedding,  She  Would  if  She  Could, 
the  Beaux'  Stratagem,  the  Relapse,  and  the  Way  of 
the  World.  These  were  in  prose,  and  represented 


166  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

the  gay  world  and  the  surface  of  fashionable  life. 
Amorous  intrigue  was  their  constantly  recurring 
theme.  Some  of  them  were  written  expressly  in 
ridicule  of  the  Puritans.  Such  was  the  Committee 
of  Dryden's  brother-in-law,  Sir  Robert  Howard,  the 
hero  of  which  is  a  distressed  gentleman,  and  the 
villain  a  London  cit,  and  president  of  the  commit- 
tee appointed  by  Parliament  to  sit  upon  the  se- 
questration of  the  estates  of  royalists.  Such  were 
also  the  Roundheads  and  the  Banished  Cavaliers  of 
Mrs.  Aphra  Behn,  who  was  a  female  spy  in  the  serv- 
ice of  Charles  II.,  at  Antwerp,  and  one  of  the 
coarsest  of  the  Restoration  comedians.  The  pro- 
fession of  piety  had  become  so  disagreeable  that  a 
shameless  cynicism  was  now  considered  the  mark 
of  a  gentleman.  The  ideal  hero  of  Wycherley  or 
Etherege  was  the  witty  young  profligate,  who  had 
seen  life,  and  learned  to  disbelieve  in  virtue.  His 
highest  qualities  were  a  contempt  for  cant,  physical 
courage,  a  sort  of  spendthrift  generosity,  and  a  good- 
natured  readiness  to  back  up  a  friend  in  a  quarrel, 
or  an  amour.  Virtue  was  bourgeois — reserved  for 
London  trades-people.  A  man  must  be  either  a 
rake  or  a  hypocrite.  The  gentlemen  were  rakes, 
the  city  people  were  hypocrites.  Their  wives,  how- 
ever, were  all  in  love  with  the  gentlemen,  and  it 
was  the  proper  thing  to  seduce  them,  and  to  bor- 
row their  husbands'  money.  For  the  first  and  last 
time,  perhaps,  in  the  history  of  the  English  drama, 
the  sympathy  of  the  audience  was  deliberately 
sought  for  the  seducer  and  the  rogue,  and  the  laugh 


FROM  RESTORATION  TO  DEATH  OF  POPE.  167 

turned  against  the  dishonored  husband  and  the 
honest  man.  (Contrast  this  with  Shakspere's 
Merry  Wives  of  Windsor?)  The  women  were  rep- 
resented as  worse  than  the  men — scheming,  igno- 
rant, and  corrupt.  The  dialogue  in  the  best  of 
these  plays  was  easy,  lively,  and  witty;  the  situa- 
tions in  some  of  them  audacious  almost  beyond 
belief.  Under  a  thin  varnish  of  good  breeding,  the 
sentiments  and  manners  were  really  brutal.  The 
loosest  gallants  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher's  thea- 
ter retain  a  fineness  of  feeling  and  that  politesse  de 
coeur — which  marks  the  gentleman.  They  are  po- 
etic creatures,  and  own  a  capacity  for  romantic 
passion.  But  the  Manlys  and  Homers  of  the  Res- 
toration comedy  have  a  prosaic,  cold-blooded  prof- 
ligacy that  disgusts.  Charles  Lamb,  in  his  in- 
genious essay  on  "  The  Artificial  Comedy  of  the 
Last  Century,"  apologized  for  the  Restoration 
stage,  on  the  ground  that  it  represented  a  world  of 
whim  and  unreality  in  which  the  ordinary  laws 
of  morality  had  no  application. 

But  Macaulay  answered  truly,  that  at  no  time  has 
the  stage  been  closer  in  its  imitation  of  real  life. 
The  theater  of  Wycherley  and  Etheregewas  but  the 
counterpart  of  that  social  condition  which  we  read 
of  in  Pepys's  Diary,  and  in  the  Memoirs  of  the 
Chevalier  de  Grammont.  This  prose  comedy  of 
manners  was  not,  indeed,  "  artificial  "  at  all,  in  the 
sense  in  which  the  contemporary  tragedy — the 
"heroic  play" — was  artificial.  It  was,  on  the 
contrary,  far  more  natural,  and,  intellectually,  of 


i68  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

much  higher  value.  It  1698  Jeremy  Collier,  a  non- 
juring  Jacobite  clergyman,  published  his  Short 
View  of  the  Immorality  and  Profaneness  of  the 
English  Stage,  which  did  much  toward  reforming 
the  practice  of  the  dramatists.  The  formal  charac- 
teristics, without  the  immorality,  of  the  Restoration 
comedy,  re-appeared  briefly  in  Goldsmith's  She 
Stoops  to  Conquer,  1772,  and  Sheridan's  Rival, 
School  for  Scandal,  and  Critic,  1775-9,  our  ^ast 
strictly  "  classical  "  comedies.  None  of  this  school 
of  English  comedians  approached  their  model, 
Moliere.  He  excelled  his»imitators  not  only  in  his 
French  urbanity — the  polished  wit  and  delicate 
grace  of  his  style — but  in  the  dexterous  unfolding 
of  his  plot,  and  in  the  wisdom  and  truth  of  his  criti- 
cism of  life,  and  his  insight  into  character.  It  is  a 
symptom  of  the  false  taste  of  the  age  that  Shaks- 
pere's  plays  were  rewritten  for  the  Restoration 
stage.  Davenant  made  new  versions  of  Macbeth 
and  Julius  Ctzsar,  substituting  rime  for  blank 
verse.  In  conjunction  with  Dryden,  he  altered  the 
Tempest,  complicating  the  intrigue  by  the  intro- 
duction of  a  male  counterpart  to  Miranda — a  youth 
who  had  never  seen  a  woman.  Shadwell  "  im- 
proved "  Timon  of  Athens,  and  Nahum  Tate  fur- 
nished a  new  fifth  act  to  King  Lear,  which  turned 
the  play  into  a  comedy  !  In  the  prologue  to  his 
doctored  version  of  Troilus  and  Cressida,  Dry- 
den  made  the  ghost  of  Shakspere  speak  of  him- 
self as 

"Untaught,  unpracticed  in  a  barbarous  age." 


FROM  RESTORATION  TO  DEATH  OF  POPE.  169 

Thomas  Rymer,  whom  Pope  pronounced  a  good 
critic,  was  very  severe  upon  Shakspere  in  his  Re- 
marks on  the  Tragedies  of  the  Last  Age  j  and  in  his 
Short  View  of  Tragedy,  1693,  he  said,  "  In  the 
neighing  of  a  horse  or  in  the  growling  of  a  mastiff, 
there  is  more  humanity  than,  many  times,  in  the 
tragical  flights  of  Shakspere."  "  To  Deptford  by 
water,"  writes  Pepys,  in  his  diary  for  August  20, 
1666,  "reading  Othello,  Moor  of  Venice;  which  I 
ever  heretofore  esteemed  a  mighty  good  play;  but, 
having  so  lately  read  the  Adventures  of  Five  Hours, 
it  seems  a  mean  thing." 

In  undramatic  poetry  the  new  school,  both  in 
England  and  in  France,  took  its  point  of  departure 
in  a  reform  against  the  extravagances  of  the 
Marinists,  or  conceited  poets,  specially  represented 
in  England  by  Donne  and  Cowley.  The  new 
poets,  both  in  their  theory  and  practice,  insisted 
upon  correctness,  clearness,  polish,  moderation, 
and  good  sense.  Boileau's  Z'  Art  Poetique,  1673, 
inspired  by  Horace's  Ars  Poetica,  was  a  treatise  in 
verse  upon  the  rules  of  correct  composition,  and  it 
gave  the  law  in  criticism  for  over  a  century,  not 
only  in  France,  but  in  Germany  and  England.  It 
gave  English  poetry  a  didactic  turn  and'  started 
the  fashion  of  writing  critical  essays  in  riming 
couplets.  The  Earl  of  Mulgrave  published  two 
"  poems  "  of  this  kind,  an  Essay  on  Satire,  and  an 
Essay  on  Poetry.  The  Earl  of  Roscommon — who, 
said  Addison,  "  makes  even  rules  a  noble  poetry  " 
— made  a  metrical  version  of  Horace's  Ars  Poetica. 


170  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

and  wrote  an  original  Essay  on  Translated  Verse. 
Of  the  same  kind  were  Addison's  epistle  to  Sach- 
everel,  entitled  An  Account  of  the  Greatest  English 
Poets,  and  Pope's  Essay  on  Criticism,  1711,  which 
was  nothing  more  than  versified  maxims  of  rhetoric, 
put  with  Pope's  usual  point  and  brilliancy.  The 
classicism  of  the  i8th  century,  it  has  been  said, 
was  a  classicism  in  red  heels  and  a  periwig.  It 
was  Latin  rather  than  Greek;  it  turned  to  the  least 
imaginative  side  of  Latin  literature  and  found  its 
models,  not  in  Vergil,  Catullus,  and  Lucretius,  but 
in  the  satires,  epistles,  and  didactic  pieces  of  Ju- 
venal, Horace,  and  Persius. 

The  chosen  medium  of  the  new  poetry  was  the 
heroic  couplet.  This  had,  of  course,  been  used  be- 
fore by  English  poets  as  far  back  as  Chaucer.  The 
greater  part  of  the  Canterbury  Tales  was  written  in 
heroic  couplets.  But  now  a  new  strength  and 
precision  were  given  to  the  familiar  measure  by 
imprisoning  the  sense  within  the  limit  of  the 
couplet,  and  by  treating  each  line  as  also  a  unit  in 
itself.  Edmund  Waller  had  written  verse  of  this 
kind  as  early  as  the  reign  of  Charles  I.  He,  said 
Dryden,  "  first  showed  us  to  conclude  the  sense 
most  commonly  in  distichs,  which,  in  the  verse  of 
those  before  him,  runs  on  for  so  many  lines  to- 
gether that  the  reader  is  out  of  breath  to  overtake 
it."  Sir  John  Denham,  also,  in  his  Cooper's  Hill, 
1643,  had  written  such  verse  as  this: 

"  O.  could  I  flow  like  thee,  and  make  thy  stream 
My  great  example  as  it  is  my  theme ! 


FROM  RESTORATION  TO  DEATH  OF  POPE.   171 

Though  deep  yet  clear,  though  gentle  yet  not  dull, 
Strong  without  rage,  without  o'ernowing  full." 

Here  we  have  the  regular  flow,  and  the  nice  bal- 
ance between  the  first  and  second  member  of  each 
couplet,  and  the  first  and  second  part  of  each  line, 
which  characterized  the  verse  of  Dryden  and 
Pope. 

"  Waller  was  smooth,  but  Dryden  taught  to  join 
The  varying  verse,  the  full  resounding  line, 
The  long  resounding  march  and  energy  divine." 

Thus  wrote  Pope,  using  for  the  nonce  the  triplet 
and  alexandrine  by  which  Dryden  frequently 
varied  the  couplet.  Pope  himself  added  a  greater 
neatness  and  polish  to  Dryden's  verse  and  brought 
the  system  to  such  monotonous  pefection  that  he 
"  made  poetry  a  mere  mechanic  art." 

The  lyrical  poetry  of  this  generation  was  almost 
entirely  worthless.  The  dissolute  wits  of  Charles 
the  Second's  court,  Sedley,  Rochester,  Sackville, 
and  the  "  mob  of  gentlemen  who  wrote  with  ease  " 
threw  off  a  few  amatory  trifles;  but  the  age  was  not 
spontaneous  or  sincere  enough  for  genuine  song. 
Cowley  introduced  the  Pindaric  ode,  a  highly  arti- 
ficial form  of  the  lyric,  in  which  the  language  was 
tortured  into  a  kind  of  spurious  grandeur,  and  the 
meter  teased  into  a  sound  and  fury,  signifying  noth- 
ing. Cowley's  Pindarics  were  filled  with  some- 
thing which  passed  for  fire,  but  has  now  utterly 
gone  out.  Nevertheless,  the  fashion  spread,  and 
"  he  who  could  do  nothing  else,"  said  Dr.  Johnson, 


172  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

"  could  write  like  Pindar."  The  best  of  these  odes 
was  Dryden's  famous  Alexander 's  Feast,  written 
for  a  celebration  of  St.  Cecilia's  day  by  a  musical 
club.  To  this  same  fashion,  also,  we  owe  Gray's 
two  fine  odes,  the  Progress  of  Poesy  and  the  Bard, 
written  a  half-century  later. 

Dryden  was  not  so  much  a  great  poet,  as  a  solid 
thinker,  with  a  splendid  mastery  of  expression,  who 
used  his  energetic  verse  as  a  vehicle  for  political 
argument  and  satire.  His  first  noteworthy  poem, 
Annus  Mir-abilis,  1667,  was  a  narrative  of  the  pub- 
lic events  of  the  year  1666,  namely:  the  Dutch 
war  and  the  great  fire  of  London.  The  subject 
of  Absalom  and  Ahitophel — the  first  part  of  which 
appeared  in  1681 — was  the  alleged  plot  of  the 
Whig  leader,  the  Earl  of  Shaftesbury,  to  defeat  the 
succession  of  the  Duke  of  York,  afterward  James 
II.,  by  securing  the  throne  to  Monmouth,  a  natural 
son  of  Charles  II.  The  parallel  afforded  by  the 
story  of  Absalom's  revolt  against  David  was 
wrought  out  by  Dryden  with  admirable  ingenuity 
and  keeping.  He  was  at  his  best  in  satirical  char- 
acter-sketches, such  as  the  brilliant  portraits  in 
this  poem  of  Shaftesbury,  as  the  false  counselor, 
Ahitophel,  and  of  the  Duke  of  Buckingham  as 
Zimri.  The  latter  was  Dryden's  reply  to  the  Re- 
hearsal. Absalom  and  Ahitophel  was  followed  by 
the  Medal,  a  continuation  of  the  same  subject,  and 
Mac  Flecknoe,  a  personal  onslaught  on  the  "  true 
blue  Protestant  poet,"  Thomas  Shad  well,  a  polit- 
ical and  literary  foe  of  Dryden.  Flecknoe,  an  ob- 


FROM  RESTORATION  TO  DEATH  OF  POPE.  173 

scure  Irish  poetaster,  being  about  to  retire  from 
the  throne  of  duncedom,  resolved  to  settle  the  suc- 
cession upon  his  son,  Shadwell,  whose  claims  to  the 
inheritance  are  vigorously  asserted. 

"  The  rest  to  some  faint  meaning  make  pretense, 
But  Shadwell  never  deviates  into  sense.  .  .  . 
The  midwife  laid  her  hand  on  his  thick  skull 
With  this  prophetic  blessing — Bethou  dull" 

Dryden  is  our  first  great  satirist.  The  formal 
satire  had  been  written  in  the  reign  of  Elisabeth 
by  Donne,  and  by  Joseph  Hall,  Bishop  of  Exe- 
ter, and  subsequently  by  Marston,  the  drama- 
tist, by  Wither,  Marvell,  and  others;  but  all  of 
these  failed  through  an  over  violence  of  lan- 
guage, and  a  purpose  too  pronouncedly  moral. 
They  had  no  lightness  of  touch,  no  irony  and 
mischief.  They  bore  down  too  hard,  imitated 
Juvenal,  and  lashed  English  society  in  terms  befit- 
ting the  corruption  of  Imperial  Rome.  They 
denounced,  instructed,  preached,  did  every  thing 
but  satirize.  The  satirist  must  raise  a  laugh. 
Donne  and  Hall  abused  men  in  classes:  priests 
were  worldly,  lawyers  greedy,  courtiers  obsequious, 
etc.  But  the  easy  scorn  of  Dryden  and  the  de- 
lightful malice  of  Pope  gave  a  pungent  personal 
interest  to  their  sarcasm,  infinitely  more  effective 
than  these  commonplaces  of  satire.  Dryden  was 
as  happy  in  controversy  as  in  satire,  and  is  unex- 
celled in  the  power  to  reason  in  verse.  His  Re- 
ligio  Laid,  1682,  was  a  poem  in  defense  of  the  En- 


174  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

glish  Church.  But  when  James  II.  came  to  the 
throne  Dryden  turned  Catholic  and  wrote  the 
Hind  and  Panther,  1687,  to  vindicate  his  new 
belief.  Dryden  had  the  misfortune  to  be  de- 
pendent upon  royal  patronage  and  upon  a  corrupt 
stage.  He  sold  his  pen  to  the  court,  and  in  his 
comedies  he  was  heavily  and  deliberately  lewd,  a 
sin  which  he  afterward  acknowledged  and  re- 
gretted. Milton's  "  soul  was  like  a  star  and  dwelt 
apart,"  but  Dryden  wrote  for  the  trampling  multi- 
tude. He  had  a  coarseness  of  moral  fiber,  but  was 
not  malignant  in  his  satire,  being  of  a  large,  care- 
less, and  forgetting  nature.  He  had  that  masculine, 
enduring  cast  of  mind  which  gathers  heat  and 
clearness  from  motion,  and  grows  better  with  age. 
His  Fables  —  modernizations  from  Chaucer  and 
translations  from  Boccaccio — written  the  year  be- 
fore he  died,  are  among  his  best  works. 

Dryden  is  also  our  first  critic  of  any  importance. 
His  critical  essays  were  mostly  written  as  prefaces 
or  dedications  to  his  poems  and  plays.  But  his 
Essay  on  Dramatic  Poesie,  which  Dr.  Johnson 
called  our  "  first  regular  and  valuable  treatise  on 
the  art  of  writing,"  was  in  the  shape  of  a  Platonic 
dialogue.  When  not  misled  by  the  French  classi- 
cism of  his  day,  Dryden  was  an  admirable  critic, 
full  of  penetration  and  sound  sense.  He  was  the 
earliest  writer,  too,  of  modern  literary  prose.  If 
the  imitation  of  French  models  was  an  injury  to 
poetry  it  was  a  benefit  to  prose.  The  best  modern 
prose  is  French,  and  it  was  the  essayists  of  the 


FROM  RESTORATION  TO  DEATH  OF  POPE.  175 

Gallicised  Restoration  age — Cowley,  Sir  William 
Temple,  and,  above  all,  Dryden — who  gave  modern 
English  prose  that  simplicity,  directness,  and  col- 
loquial air,  which  marks  it  off  from  the  more  arti- 
ficial diction  of  Milton,  Taylor,  and  Browne. 

A  few  books  whose  shaping  influences  lay  in  the 
past  belong  by  their  date  to  this  period.  John 
Bunyan,  a  poor  tinker,  whose  reading  was  almost 
wholly  in  the  Bible  and  Fox's  Book  of  Martyrs, 
imprisoned  for  twelve  years  in  Bedford  jail  for 
preaching  at  conventicles,  wrote  and,  in  1678,  pub- 
lished his  Pilgrims  Progress,  the  greatest  of  re- 
ligious allegories.  Bunyan's  spiritual  experiences 
were  so  real  to  him  that  they  took  visible  concrete 
shape  in  his  imagination  as  men,  women,  cities, 
landscapes.  It  is  the  simplest,  the  most  transpar- 
ent of  allegories.  Unlike  the  Faery  Queene,  the 
story  of  Pilgrims  Progress  has  no  reason  for  ex- 
isting apart  from  its  inner  meaning,  and  yet  its 
reality  is  so  vivid  that  children  read  of  Vanity 
Fair  and  the  Slough  of  Despond  and  Doubting 
Castle  and  the  Valley  of  the  Shadow  of  Death 
with  the  same  belief  with  which  they  read  of 
Crusoe's  cave  or  Aladdin's  palace. 

It  is  a  long  step  from  the  Bedford  tinker  to  the 
cultivated  poet  of  Paradise  Lost.  They  represent 
the  poles  of  the  Puritan  party.  Yet  it  may  admit 
of  a  doubt,  whether  the  Puritan  epic  is,  in  essentials, 
as  vital  and  original  a  work  as  the  Puritan  allegory. 
They  both  came  out  quietly  and  made  little  noise 
at  first.  But  the  Pilgrims  Progress  got  at  once 


J;6  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

into  circulation,  and  not  even  a  single  copy  of  the 
first  edition  remains.  Milton,  too — who  received 
;£io  for  the  copyright  of  Paradise  Lost — seemingly 
found  that  "fit  audience  though  few  "  for  which  he 
prayed,  as  his  poem  reached  its  second  impression 
in  five  years  (1672).  Dryden  visited  him  in  his 
retirement  and  asked  leave  to  turn  it  into  rime 
and  put  it  on  the  stage  as  an  opera.  "  Ay,"  said 
Milton,  good  humoredly,  "you  may  tag  my 
verses."  And  accordingly  they  appeared,  duly 
tagged,  in  Dryden's  operatic  masque,  the  State  of 
Innocence,  In  this  startling  conjunction  we  have 
the  two  ages  in  a  nut-shell :  the  Commonwealth 
was  an  epic,  the  Restoration  an  opera. 

The  literary  period  covered  by  the  life  of  Pope, 
1688-1744,  is  marked  off  by  no  distinct  line  from 
the  generation  before  it.  Taste  continued  to  be 
governed  by  the  precepts  of  Boileau  and  the 
French  classical  school.  Poetry  remained  chiefly 
didactic  and  satirical,  and  satire  in  Pope's  hands 
was  more  personal  even  than  in  Dryden's,  and  ad- 
dressed itself  less  to  public  issues.  The  literature 
of  the  "Augustan  age"  of  Queen  Anne  (1702- 
1714)  was  still  more  a  literature  of  the  town  and 
of  fashionable  society  than  that  of  the  Restoration 
had  been.  It  was  also  closely  involved  with  party 
struggles  of  Whig  and  Tory,  and  the  ablest  pens 
on  either  side  were  taken  into  alliance  by  the  polit- 
ical leaders.  Swift  was  in  high  favor  with  the  Tory 
ministers,  Oxford  and  Bolingbroke,  and  his  pam- 
phlets, the  Public  Spirit  of  the  Whigs  and  the  Con- 


FROM  RESTORATION  TO  DEATH  OF  POPE.  177 

duct  of  the  Allies,  were  rewarded  with  the  deanery 
of  St.  Patrick's,  Dublin.  Addison  became  Secre- 
tary of  State  under  a  Whig  government.  Prior 
was  in  the  diplomatic  service.  Daniel  De  Foe,  the 
author  of  Robinson  Crusoe,  1719,  was  a  prolific  polit- 
ical writer,  conducted  his  Review  in  the  interest  of 
the  Whigs  and  was  imprisoned  and  pilloried  for 
his  ironical  pamphlet,  The  Shortest  Way  with  the 
Dissenters.  Steele,  who  was  a  violent  writer  on 
the  Whig  side,  held  various  public  offices,  such 
as  Commissioner  of  Stamps  and  Commissioner  for 
Forfeited  Estates,  and  sat  in  Parliament.  After  the 
Revolution  of  1688  the  manners  and  morals  of 
English  society  were  somewhat  on  the  mend. 
The  court  of  William  and  Mary,  and  of  their  suc- 
cessor, Queen  Anne,  set  no  such  example  of  open 
profligacy  as  that  of  Charles  II.  But  there  was 
much  hard  drinking,  gambling,  dueling,  and  in- 
trigue in  London,  and  vice  was  fashionable  till 
Addison  partly  preached  and  partly  laughed  it  down 
in  the  Spectator.  The  women  were  mostly  frivo- 
lous and  uneducated,  and  not  unfrequently  fast. 
They  are  spoken  of  with  systematic  disrespect 
by  nearly  every  writer  of  the  time,  except  Steele. 
"Every  woman,"  wrote  Pope,  "is  at  heart  a  rake." 
The  reading  public  had  now  become  large  enough 
to  make  letters  a  profession.  Dr.  Johnson  said 
that  Pope  was  the  first  writer  in  whose  case  the 
book-seller  took  the  place  of  the  patron.  His 
translation  of  Homer,  published  by  subscription, 
brought  him  between  eight  and  nine  thousand 
12 


178  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

pounds  and  made  him  independent.  But  the 
activity  of  the  press  produced  a  swarm  of  poorly- 
paid  hack-writers,  penny-a-liners,  who  lived  from 
hand  to  mouth  and  did  small  literary  jobs  to  order. 
Many  of  these  inhabited  Grub  Street,  and  their 
lampoons  against  Pope  and  others  of  their  more 
successful  rivals  called  out  Pope's  Dunriad,  or  epic 
of  the  dunces,  by  way  of  retaliation.  The  politics 
of  the  time  were  sordid  and  consisted  mainly  of 
an  ignoble  scramble  for  office.  The  Whigs  were 
fighting  to  maintain  the  Act  of  Succession  in  favor 
of  the  House  of  Hanover,  and  the  Tories  were 
secretly  intriguing  with  the  exiled  Stuarts.  Many 
of  the  leaders,  such  as  the  great  Whig  champion, 
John  Churchill,  Duke  of  Marlborough,  were  with- 
out political  principle  or  even  personal  honesty. 
The  Church,  too,  was  in  a  condition  of  spiritual 
deadness.  Bishoprics  and  livings  were  sold  and 
given  to  political  favorites.  Clergymen,  like  Swift 
and  Lawrence  Sterne,  were  worldly  in  their  lives 
and  immoral  in  their  writings,  and  were  practically 
unbelievers.  The  growing  religious  skepticism 
appeared  in  the  Deist  controversy.  Numbers  of 
men  in  high  position  were  Deists ;  the  Earl  of 
Shaftesbury,  for  example,  and  Pope's  brilliant 
friend,  Henry  St.  John,  Lord  Bolingbroke,  the 
head  of  the  Tory  ministry,  whose  political  writings 
had  much  influence  upon  his  young  French  ac- 
quaintance, Voltaire.  Pope  was  a  Roman  Cath- 
olic, though  there  is  little  to  show  it  in  his  writings, 
and  the  underlying  thought  of  his  famous  Essay 


FROM  RESTORATION  TO  DEATH  OF  POPE.  179 

on  Man  was  furnished  him  by  Bolingbroke.  The 
letters  of  the  cold-hearted  Chesterfield  to  his  son 
were  accepted  as  a  manual  of  conduct,  and  La 
Rochefoucauld's  cynical  maxims  were  quoted  as 
authority  on  life  and  human  nature.  Said  Swift  : 

"  As  Rochefoucauld  his  maxims  drew 
From  nature,  I  believe  them  true. 
They  argue  no  corrupted  mind 
In  him;  the  fault  is  in  mankind." 

The  succession  which  Dryden  had  willed  to 
Congreve  was  taken  up  by  Alexander  Pope.  He 
was  a  man  quite  unlike  Dryden,  sickly,  deformed, 
morbidly  precocious,  and  spiteful;  nevertheless  he 
joined  on  to  and  continued  Dryden.  He  was  more 
careful  in  his  literary  workmanship  than  his  great 
forerunner,  and  in  his  Moral  Essays  and  Satires 
he  brought  the  Horatian  epistle  in  verse,  the  for- 
mal satire  and  that  species  of  didactic  poem  of 
which  Boileau  had  given  the  first  example,  to  an 
exquisite  perfection  of  finish  and  verbal  art.  Dry- 
den had  translated  Vergil,  and  so  Pope  translated 
Homer.  The  throne  of  the  dunces,  which  Dryden 
had  conferred  upon  Shadwell,  Pope,  in  his  Dunciad, 
passed  on  to  two  of  his  own  literary  foes,  Theobald 
and  Colley  Gibber.  There  is  a  great  waste  of 
strength  in  this  elaborate  squib,  and  most  of  the 
petty  writers,  whose  names  it  has  preserved,  as  has 
been  said,  like  flies  in  amber,  are  now  quite  un- 
known. But,  although  we  have  to  read  it  with 
notes,  to  get  the  point  of  its  allusions,  it  is  easy  to 


180  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

see  what  execution  it  must  have  done  at  the  time; 
and  it  is  impossible  to  withhold  admiration  from  the 
wit,  the  wickedness,  the  triumphant  mischief  of  the 
thing.  The  sketch  of  Addison — who  had  offended 
Pope  by  praising  a  rival  translation  of  Homer — as 
"  Atticus,"  is  as  brilliant  as  any  thing  of  the  kind  in 
Dryden.  Pope's  very  malignity  made  his  sting 
sharper  than  Dryden's.  He  secreted  venom,  and 
worked  out  his  revenges  deliberately,  bringing  all 
the  resources  of  his  art  to  bear  upon  the  question 
of  how  to  give  the  most  pain  most  cleverly. 

Pope's  masterpiece  is,  perhaps,  the  Rape  of  the 
Lock,  a  mock  heroic  poem,  a  "  dwarf  Iliad,"  re- 
counting, in  five  cantos,  a  society  quarrel,  which 
arose  from  Lord  Petre's  cutting  a  lock  of  hair  from 
the  head  of  Mrs.  Arabella  Fermor.  Boileau,  in 
his  Lutrin,  had  treated,  with  the  same  epic  dignity, 
a  dispute  over  the  placing  of  the  re.ading  desk  in 
a  parish  church.  Pope  was  the  Homer  of  the 
drawing-room,  the  boudoir,  the  tea-urn,  the  om- 
ber-party,  the  sedan-chair,  the  parrot  cage,  and  the 
lap-dogs.  This  poem,  in  its  sparkle  and  airy  grace, 
is  the  topmost  blossom  of  a  highly  artificial  so- 
ciety, the  quintessence  of  whatever  poetry  was 
possible  in  those 

"  Teacup  times  of  hood  and  hoop, 
And  when  the  patch  was  worn," 

with  whose  decorative  features,  at  least,  the  recent 
Queen  Anne  revival  has  made  this  generation  fa- 
miliar. It  may  be  said  of  it,  as  Thackeray  said  of 


FROM  RESTORATION  TO  DEATH  OF  POPE.  181 

Gay's  pastorals  :  "It  is  to  poetry  what  charming 
little  Dresden  china  figures  are  to  sculpture,  grace- 
ful, minikin,  fantastic,  with  a  certain  beauty  al- 
ways accompanying  them."  The  Rape  of  the  Lock, 
perhaps,  stops  short  of  beauty,  but  it  attains  ele- 
gance and  prettiness  in  a  supreme  degree.  In 
imitation  of  the  gods  and  goddesses  in  the  Iliad, 
who  intermeddle  for  or  against  the  human  charac- 
ters, Pope  introduced  the  Sylphs  of  the  Rosicru- 
cian  philosophy.  We  may  measure  the  distance 
between  imagination  and  fancy,  if  we  will  compare 
these  little  filagree  creatures  with  Shakspere's 
elves,  whose  occupation  it  was 

"  To  tread  the  ooze  of  the  salt  deep, 

Or  run  upon  the  sharp  wind  of  the  north,  .  .  . 

Or  on  the  beached  margent  of  the  sea, 

To  dance  their  ringlets  to  the  whispering  wind." 

Very  different  were  the  offices  of  Pope's  fays: 

"Our  humble  province  is  to  tend  the  fair ; 
Not  a  less  pleasing,  though  less  glorious,  care  ; 
To  save  the  powder  from  too  rude  a  gale, 
Nor  let  the  imprisoned  essences  exhale.  .  .  . 
Nay  oft  in  dreams  invention  we  bestow 
To  change  a  flounce  or  add  a  furbelow." 

Pope  was  not  a  great  poet ;  it  has  been  doubted 
whether  he  was  a  poet  at  all.  He  does  not  touch 
the  heart,  or  stimulate  the  imagination,  as  the  true 
poet  always  does.  In  the  poetry  of  nature,  and 
the  poetry  of  passion,  he  was  altogether  impotent. 


182  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

His  Windsor  Forest  and  his  Pastorals  are  artificial 
and  false,  not  written  with  "  the  eye  upon  the  ob- 
ject." His  epistle  of  Eloisa  to  Abelard  is  declam- 
atory and  academic,  and  leaves  the  reader  cold. 
The  only  one  of  his  poems  which  is  at  all  possessed 
with  feeling  is  his  pathetic  Elegy  to  the  Memory  of 
an  Unfortunate  Lady.  But  he  was  a  great  literary 
artist.  Within  the  cramped  and  starched  regularity 
of  the  heroic  couplet,  which  the  fashion  of  the 
time  and  his  own  habit  of  mind  imposed  upon  him, 
he  secured  the  largest  variety  of  modulation  and 
emphasis  of  which  that  verse  was  capable.  He 
used  antithesis,  periphrasis,  and  climax  with  great 
skill.  His  example  dominated  English  poetry  for 
nearly  a  century,  and  even  now,  when  a  poet  like 
Dr.  Holmes,  for  example,  would  write  satire  or  hu- 
morous verse  of  a  dignified  kind,  he  turns  instinct- 
ively to  the  measure  and  manner  of  Pope.  He 
was  not  a  consecutive  thinker,  like  Dryden,  and 
cared  less  about  the  truth  of  his  thought  than  about 
the  pointedness  of  its  expression.  His  language 
was  closer-grained  than  Dryden's.  His  great  art 
was  the  art  of  putting  things.  He  is  more  quoted 
than  any  other  English  poet,  but  Shakspere.  He 
struck  the  average  intelligence,  the  common  sense 
of  English  readers,  and  furnished  it  with  neat,  port- 
able formulas,  so  that  it  no  longer  needed  to 
"  vent  its  observation  in  mangled  terms,"  but  could 
pour  itself  out  compactly,  artistically,  in  little, 
ready-made  molds.  But  his  high-wrought  brill- 
iancy, this  unceasing  point,  soon  fatigue.  His 


FROM  RESTORATION  TO  DEATH  OF  POPE.  183 

poems  read  like  a  series  of  epigrams;  and  every 
line  has  a  hit  or  an  effect. 

From  the  reign  of  Queen  Anne  date  the  begin- 
nings of  the  periodical  essay.  Newspapers  had  been 
published  since  the  time  of  the  Civil  War;  at  first 
irregularly,  and  then  regularly.  But  no  literature 
of  permanent  value  appeared  in  periodical  form 
until  Richard  Steele  started  the  Tatler,  in  1709. 
In  this  he  was  soon  joined  by  his  friend,  Joseph 
Addison ;  and  in  its  successor,  the  Spectator,  the 
first  number  of  which  was  issued  March  i,  1711, 
Addison's  contributions  outnumbered  Steele's. 
The  Tatler  was  published  on  three,  the  Spectator  on 
six,  days  of  the  week.  The  Tatler  gave  political 
news,  but  each  number  of  the  Spectator  consisted 
of  a  single  essay.  The  object  of  these  periodicals 
was  to  reflect  the  passing  humors  of  the  time,  and 
to  satirize  the  follies  and  minor  immoralities  of  the 
town.  "I  shall  endeavor,"  wrote  Addison,  in  the 
tenth  paper  of  the  Spectator,  "  to  enliven  morality 
with  wit,  and  to  temper  wit  with  morality.  ...  It 
was  said  of  Socrates  that  he  brought  Philosophy 
down  from  Heaven  to  inhabit  among  men;  and  I 
shall  be  ambitious  to  have  it  said  of  me  that  I  have 
brought  Philosophy  out  of  closets  and  libraries, 
schools  and  colleges,  to  dwell  in  clubs  and  assem- 
blies, at  tea-tables  and  in  coffee-houses."  Addison's 
satire  was  never  personal.  He  was  a  moderate 
man,  and  did  what  he  could  to  restrain  Steele's  in- 
temperate party  zeal.  His  character  was  dignified 
and  pure,  and  his  strongest  emotion  seems  to  have 


184  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

been  his  religious  feeling.  One  of  his  contempo- 
raries called  him  "a  parson  in  a  tie  wig,"  and  he 
wrote  several  excellent  hymns.  His  mission  was 
that  of  censor  of  the  public  taste.  Sometimes  he 
lectures  and  sometimes  he  preaches,  and  in  his  Sat- 
urday papers,  he  brought  his  wide  reading  and 
nice  scholarship  into  service  for  the  instruction  of 
his  readers.  Such  was  the  series  of  essays,  in 
which  he  gave  an  elaborate  review  of  Paradise 
Lost.  Such  also  was  his  famous  paper,  the  Vision 
of  Mirza,  an  oriental  allegory  of  human  life.  The 
adoption  of  this  slightly  pedagogic  tone  was  justi- 
fied by  the  prevalent  ignorance  and  frivolity  of  the 
age.  But  the  lighter  portions  of  the  Spectator  are 
those  which  have  worn  the  best.  Their  style  is 
at  once  correct  and  easy,  and  it  is  as  a  humorist, 
a  sly  observer  of  manners,  and  above  all,  a  de- 
lightful talker,  that  Addison  is  best  known  to 
posterity.  In  the  personal  sketches  of  the  mem- 
bers of  the  Spectator  Club,  of  Will  Honeycomb, 
Captain  Sentry,  Sir  Andrew  Freeport,  and,  above 
all,  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley,  the  quaint  and  honest 
country  gentleman,  may  be  found  the  nucleus  of 
the  modern  prose  fiction  of  character.  Addison's 
humor  is  always  a  trifle  grave.  There  is  no  whim- 
sy, no  frolic  in  it,  as  in  Sterne  or  Lamb.  "  He 
thinks  justly,"  said  Dr.  Johnson,  "but  he  thinks 
faintly."  The  Spectator  had  a  host  of  followers, 
from  the  somewhat  heavy  Rambler  and  Idler  of 
Johnson,  down  to  the  Salmagundi  papers  of  our 
own  Irving,  who  was,  perhaps,  Addison's  latest  and 


FROM  RESTORATION  TO  DEATH  OF  POPE.  185 

best  literary  descendant.  In  his  own  age  Addison 
made  some  figure  as  a  poet  and  dramatist.  His 
Campaign,  celebrating  the  victory  of  Blenheim, 
had  one  much-admired  couplet,  in  which  Marl- 
borough  was  likened  to  the  angel  of  tempest,  who 

"  Pleased  the  Almighty's  orders  to  perform, 
Rides  in  the  whirlwind  and  directs  the  storm." 

His  stately,  classical  tragedy,  Catoy  which  was  act- 
ed at  Drury  Lane  Theater  in  1712,  with  immense 
applause,  was  pronounced  by  Dr.  Johnson  "  unques- 
tionably the  noblest  production  of  Addison's  gen- 
ius." It  is,  notwithstanding,  cold  and  tedious,  as 
a  whole,  though  it  has  some  fine  declamatory  pas- 
sages— in  particular  the  soliloquy  of  Cato  in  the 
fifth  act— 

"It  must  be  so:  Plato,  thou  reasonest  well,"  etc. 

The  greatest  of  the  Queen  Anne  wits,  and  one  of 
the  most  savage  and  powerful  satirists  that  ever 
lived,  was  Jonathan  Swift.  As  secretary  in  the 
family  of  Sir  William  Temple,  and  domestic  chap- 
lain to  the  Earl  of  Berkeley,  he  had  known  in  youth 
the  bitterness  of  poverty  and  dependence.  After- 
ward he  wrote  himself  into  influence  with  the  Tory 
ministry,  and  was  promised  a  bishopric,  but  was 
put  off  with  the  deanery  of  St.  Patrick's,  and  retired 
to  Ireland  to  "  die  like  a  poisoned  rat  in  a  hole." 
His  life  was  made  tragical  by  the  forecast  of  the 
madness  which  finally  overtook  him.  "  The  stage 
darkened,"  said  Scott,  "  ere  the  curtain  fell."  In- 


i86  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

sanity  deepened  into  idiocy  and  a  hideous  silence, 
and  for  three  years  before  his  death  he  spoke  hard- 
ly ever  a  word.  He  had  directed  that  his  tomb- 
stone should  bear  the  inscription,  Ubi  saeva  indig- 
natio  cor  ulterius  lacerare  nequit.  "  So  great  a  man 
he  seems  to  me,"  wrote  Thackeray,  "  that  thinking 
of  him  is  like  thinking  of  an  empire  falling."  Swift's 
first  noteworthy  publication  was  his  Tale  of  a  Tub, 
1704,  a  satire  on  religious  differences.  But  his 
great  work  was  Gulliver's  Travels,  1726,  the  book 
in  which  his  hate  and  scorn  of  mankind,  and  the 
long  rage  of  mortified  pride  and  thwarted  ambition 
found  their  fullest  expression.  Children  read  the 
voyages  to  Lilliput  and  Brobdingnag,  to  the  flying 
island  of  Laputa  and  the  country  of  the  Hou- 
yhnhnms,  as  they  read  Robinson  Crusoe,  as  stories 
of  wonderful  adventure.  Swift  had  all  of  De  Foe's 
realism,  his  power  of  giving  veri-similitude  to  his 
narrative  by  the  invention  of  a  vast  number  of 
small,  exact,  consistent  details.  But  underneath 
its  fairy  tales,  Gulliver's  Travels  is  a  satire,  far 
more  radical  than  any  of  Dryden's  or  Pope's,  be- 
cause directed,  not  against  particular  parties  or  per- 
sons, but  against  human  nature.  In  his  account  of 
Lilliput  and  Brobdingnag,  Swift  tries  to  show — 
looking  first  through  one  end  of  the  telescope  and 
then  through  the  other  —  that  human  greatness, 
goodness,  beauty  disappear  if  the  scale  be  altered 
a  little.  If  men  were  six  inches  high  instead  of  six 
feet — such  is  the  logic  of  his  tale — their  wars,  gov- 
ernments, science,  religion — all  their  institutions. 


FROM  RESTORATION  TO  DEATH  OF  POPE.  187 

in  fine,  and  all  the  courage,  wisdom,  and  virtue  by 
which  these  have  been  built  up,  would  appear  laugh- 
able. On  the  other  hand,  if  they  were  sixty  feet 
high  instead  of  six,  they  would  become  disgusting. 
The  complexion  of  the  finest  ladies  would  show 
blotches,  hairs,  excrescences,  and  an  overpowering 
effluvium  would  breathe  from  the  pores  of  the 
skin.  Finally,  in  his  loathsome  caricature  of  man- 
kind, as  Yahoos,  he  contrasts  them  to  their  shame 
with  the  beasts,  and  sets  instinct  above  reason. 

The  method  of  Swift's  satire  was  grave  irony. 
Among  his  minor  writings  in  this  kind  are  his  Ar- 
gument against  Abolishing  Christianity,  his  Modest 
Proposal  for  utilizing  the  surplus  population  of  Ire- 
land by  eating  the  babies  of  the  poor,  and  his  Pre- 
dictions of  Isaac  Bickerstaff.  In  the  last  he  predict- 
ed the  death  of  one  Partridge,  an  almanac  maker, 
at  a  certain  day  and  hour.  When  the  time  set  was 
past,  he  published  a  minute  account  of  Partridge's 
last  moments;  and  when  the  subject  of  this  excel- 
lent fooling  printed  an  indignant  denial  of  his  own 
death,  Swift  answered  very  temperately,  proving 
that  he  was  dead  and  remonstrating  with  him  on 
the  violence  of  his  language.  "  To  call  a  man  a 
fool  and  villain,  an  impudent  fellow,  only  for  differ- 
ing from  him  in  a  point  merely  speculative,  is,  in 
my  humble  opinion,  a  very  improper  style  for  a 
person  of  his  education."  Swift  wrote  verses  as 
well  as  prose,  but  their  motive  was  the  reverse  of  po- 
etical. His  gross  and  cynical  humor  vulgarized 
whatever  it  touched.  He  leaves  us  no  illusions, 


i88  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

and  not  only  strips  his  subject,  but  flays  it  and 
shows  the  raw  muscles  beneath  the  skin.  He  de- 
lighted to  dwell  upon  the  lowest  bodily  functions 
of  human  nature.  "  He  saw  bloodshot,"  said 
Thackeray. 

1.  Macaulay's  Essay,  The  Comic  Dramatists  of 
the  Restoration. 

2.  The  Poetical  Works  of  John  Dryden.  Globe 
Edition.     Macmillan  &  Co. 

3.  Thackeray's   English  Humorists  of  the  Last 
Century. 

4.  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley.     New  York:  Harper, 
1878. 

5.  Swift's  Tale  of  a   Tub,    Gulliver's  Travels, 
Directions  to  Servants,  Polite  Conversation,  The 
Great  Question  Debated,  Verses  on  the  Death  of 
Dean  Swift. 

6.  The    Poetical    Works    of    Alexander    Pope. 
Globe  Edition.     Macmillan  &  Co. 


FROM  POPE  TO  FRENCH  REVOLUTION.  189 


CHAPTER  VI. 

FROM  THE  DEATH  OF  POPE  TO  THE 
FRENCH  REVOLUTION. 

1744-1789. 

POPE'S  example  continued  potent  for  fifty  years 
after  his  death.  Especially  was  this  so  in  satiric 
and  didactic  poetry.  Not  only  Dr.  Johnson's  adap- 
tations from  Juvenal,  London,  1738,  and  the  Van- 
ity of  Human  Wishes,  1749,  but  Gifford's  Baviad, 
1791,  and  Maeviad,  1795,  and  Byron's  English 
Bards  and  Scotch  Revinvers,  1 809,  were  in  the  verse 
and  manner  of  Pope.  In  Johnson's  Lives  of  the 
Poets,  1781,  Dryden  and  Pope  are  treated  as  the 
two  greatest  English  poets.  But  long  before  this  a 
revolution  in  literary  taste  had  begun,  a  movement 
which  is  variously  described  as  The  Return  to  Nat- 
ure, or  The  Rise  of  the  New  Romantic  School. 

For  nearly  a  hundred  years  poetry  had  dealt 
with  manners  and  the  life  of  towns,  the  gay,  pro- 
saic life  of  Congreve  or  of  Pope.  The  sole  con- 
cession to  the  life  of  nature  was  the  old  pastoral, 
which,  in  the  hands  of  cockneys,  like  Pope  and  Am- 
brose Philips,  who  merely  repeated  stock  descrip- 
tions at  second  or  third  hand,  became  even  more 
artificial  than  a  Beggar's  Opera  or  a  Rape  of  the 


190  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

Lock.  These,  at  least,  were  true  to  their  environ- 
ment, and  were  natural,  just  because  they  were  arti- 
ficial. But  the  Seasons  of  James  Thomson,  pub- 
lished in  installments  from  1726-30,  had  opened  a 
new  field.  Their  theme  was  the  English  landscape, 
as  varied  by  the  changes  of  the  year,  and  they  were 
written  by  a  true  lover  and  observer  of  nature. 
Mark  Akenside's  Pleasures  of  Imagination,  1744, 
published  the  year  of  Pope's  death,  was  written 
like  the  Seasons,  in  blank  verse  ;  and  although  its 
language  had  much  of  the  formal,  didactic  cast  of 
the  Queen  Anne  poets,  it  pointed  unmistakably  in 
the  new  direction.  Thomson  had  painted  the  soft 
beauties  of  a  highly  cultivated  land — lawns,  gar- 
dens, forest-preserves,  orchards,  and  sheep-walks. 
But  now  a  fresh  note  was  struck  in  the  literature, 
not  of  England  alone,  but  of  Germany  and  France 
— romanticism,  the  chief  element  in  which  was  a 
love  of  the  wild.  Poets  turned  from  the  lameness 
of  modern  existence  to  savage  nature  and  the 
heroic  simplicity  of  life  among  primitive  tribes.  In 
France,  Rousseau  introduced  the  idea  of  the  nat- 
ural man,  following  his  instincts  in  disregard  of  so- 
cial conventions.  In  Germany  Bodmer  published, 
in  1753,  the  first  edition  of  the  old  German  epic, 
the  Nibelungen  Lied.  Works  of  a  similar  tendency 
in  England  were  the  odes  of  William  Collins  and 
Thomas  Gray,  published  between  1747-57,  espe- 
cially Collins's  Ode  on  the  Superstitions  of  the  High- 
lands, and  Gray's  Bard,  a  pindaric,  in  which  the  last 
survivor  of  the  Welsh  bards  invokes  vengeance  on 


FROM  POPE  TO  FRENCH  REVOLUTION.     191 

Edward  I.,  the  destroyer  of  his  guild.  Gray  and 
Mason,  his  friend  and  editor,  made  translations 
from  the  ancient  Welsh  and  Norse  poetry.  Thomas 
Percy's  Reliques  of  Ancient  English  Poetry,  1765, 
aroused  a  taste  for  old  ballads.  Richard  Kurd's 
Letters  on  Chivalry  and  Romance,  Thomas  Warton's 
History  of  English  Poetry,  1774-78,  Tynvhitt's  crit- 
ical edition  of  Chaucer,  and  Horace  Walpole's 
Gothic  romance,  the  Castle  of  Otranto,  1765,  stimu- 
lated this  awakened  interest  in  the  picturesque  as- 
pects of  feudal  life,  and  contributed  to  the  fondness 
for  supernatural  and  mediaeval  subjects.  Jarnes 
Seattle's  Minstrel,  1771,  described  the  educating 
influence  of  Scottish  mountain  scenery  upon  the 
genius  of  a  young  poet.  But  the  most  remarkable 
instances  of  this  passion  for  wild  nature  and  the 
romantic  past  were  the  Poems  of  Ossian  and 
Thomas  Chatterton's  literary  forgeries. 

In  1762  James  Macpherson  published  the  first 
installment  of  what  professed  to  be  a  translation  of 
the  poems  of  Ossian,  a  Gaelic  bard,  whom  tradition 
placed  in  the  3d  century.  Macpherson  said  that 
he  made  his  version  —  including  two  complete 
epics,  Fingal  and  Temora,  from  Gaelic  MSS., 
which  he  had  collected  in  the  Scottish  Highlands. 
A  fierce  controversy  at  once  sprang  up  over  the 
genuineness  of  these  remains.  Macpherson  was 
challenged  to  produce  his  originals,  and  when, 
many  years  after,  he  published  the  Gaelic  text,  it 
was  asserted  that  this  was  nothing  but  a  transla- 
tion of  his  own  English  into  modern  Gaelic.  Of 


192  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

the  MSS.  which  he  professed  to  have  found  not  a 
scrap  remained:  the  Gaelic  text  was  printed  from 
transcriptions  in  Macpherson's  handwriting  or  in 
that  of  his  secretaries. 

But  whether  these  poems  were  the  work  of  Os- 
sian  or  of  Macpherson,  they  made  a  deep  impres- 
sion upon  the  time.  Napoleon  admired  them 
greatly,  and  Goethe  inserted  passages  from  the 
"  Songs  of  Selma  "  in  his  Sorrows  of  Werther. 
Macpherson  composed — or  translated — them  in  an 
abrupt,  rhapsodical  prose,  resembling  the  English 
version  of  Job  or  of  the  prophecies  of  Isaiah. 
They  filled  the  minds  of  their  readers  with  images 
of  vague  sublimity  and  desolation;  the  mountain 
torrent,  the  mist  on  the  hills,  the  ghosts  of  heroes 
half  seen  by  the  setting  moon,  the  thistle  in  the 
ruined  courts  of  chieftains,  the  grass  whistling  on 
the  windy  heath,  the  gray  rock  by  the  blue  stream 
of  Lutha,  and  the  cliffs  of  sea-surrounded  Gormal. 

"  A  tale  of  the  times  of  old!  " 

"  Why,  thou  wanderer  unseen!  Thou  bender  of 
the  thistle  of  Lora;  why,  thou  breeze  of  the  valley, 
hast  thou  left  mine  ear?  I  hear  no  distant  roar  of 
streams!  No  sound  of  the  harp  from  the  rock! 
Come,  thou  huntress  of  Lutha,  Malvina,  call  back 
his  soul  to  the  bard.  I  look  forward  to  Lochlin 
of  lakes,  to  the  dark  billowy  bay  of  U-thorno,  where 
Fingal  descends  from  Ocean,  from  the  roar  of 
winds.  Few  are  the  heroes  of  Morven  in  a  land 
unknown." 

Thomas  Chatterton,  who  died   by  his  own  hand 


FROM  POPE  TO  FRENCH  REVOLUTION.     193 

in  1770,  at  the  age  of  seventeen,  is  one  of  the  most 
wonderful  examples  of  precocity  in  the  history  of 
literature.  His  father  had  been  sexton  of  the  an- 
cient Church  of  St.  Mary  Redcliff,  in  Bristol,  and 
the  boy's  sensitive  imagination  took  the  stamp  of 
his  surroundings.  He  taught  himself  to  read  from 
a  black-letter  Bible.  He  drew  charcoal  sketches 
of  churches,  castles,  knightly  tombs,  and  heraldic 
blazonry.  When  only  eleven  years  old,  he  began 
the  fabrication  of  documents  in  prose  and  verse, 
which  he  ascribed  to  a  fictitious  Thomas  Rowley, 
a  secular  priest  at  Bristol  in  the  i5th  century. 
Chatterton  pretended  to  have  found  these  among 
the  contents  of  an  old  chest  in  the  muniment  room 
of  St.  Mary  Redcliff's.  The  Rowley  poems  in- 
cluded two  tragedies,  Aella  and  Goddwyn,  two 
cantos  of  a  long  poem  on  the  Battle  of  Hastings, 
and  a  number  of  ballads  and  minor  pieces.  Chat- 
terton had  no  precise  knowledge  of  early  English, 
or  even  of  Chaucer.  His  method  of  working  was 
as  follows:  He  made  himself  a  manuscript  glossary 
of  the  words  marked  as  archaic  in  Bailey's  and 
Kersey's  English  dictiqnaries,  composed  his  poems 
first  in  modern  language,  and  then  turned  them 
into  ancient  spelling,  and  substituted  here  and 
there  the  old  words  in  his  glossary  for  their 
modern  equivalents.  Naturally  he  made  many 
mistakes,  and  though  Horace  Walpole,  to  whom 
he  sent  some  of  his  pieces,  was  unable  to  detect 
the  forgery,  his  friends,  Gray  and  Mason,  to  whom 
he  submitted  them,  at  once  pronounced  'them 
12 


194  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

spurious.  Nevertheless  there  was  a  controversy 
over  Rowley,  hardly  less  obstinate  than  that  over 
Ossian,  a  controversy  made  possible  only  by  the 
then  almost  universal  ignorance  of  the  forms, 
scansion,  and  vocabulary  of  early  English  poetry. 
Chatterton's  poems  are  of  little  value  in  them- 
selves, but  they  are  the  record  of  an  industry  and 
imitative  quickness,  marvelous  in  a  mere  child, 
and  they  show  how,  with  the  instinct  of  genius,  he 
threw  himself  into  the  main  literary  current  of  his 
time.  Discarding  the  couplet  of  Pope,  the  poets 
now  went  back  for  models  to  the  Elisabethan 
writers.  Thomas  Warton  published,  in  1753,  his 
Observations  on  the  Faerie  Qiteene.  Beattie's  Min- 
strel, Thomson's  Castle  of  Indolence,  William  Shen- 
stone's  Schoolmistress,  and  John  Dyer's  Fleece, 
were  all  written  in  the  Spenserian  stanza.  Shen- 
stone  gave  a  partly  humorous  effect  to  his  poem  by 
imitating  Spenser's  archaisms,  and  Thomson  re- 
produced in  many  passages  the  copious  harmony 
and  luxuriant  imagery  of  the  Faerie  Queene. 
The  Fleece  was  a  poem  on  English  wool-growing, 
after  the  fashion  of  Vergil's  Georgics.  The  subject 
was  unfortunate,  for,  as  Dr.  Johnson  said,  it  is  im- 
possible to  make  poetry  out  of  surges  and  drug- 
gets. Dyer's  Grongar  Hill,  which  mingles  reflec- 
tion with  natural  description  in  the  manner  of 
Gray's  Elegy  written  in  a  Country  Churchyard,  was 
composed  in  the  octosyllabic  verse  of  Milton's 
L" Allegro  and  //  Penseroso.  Milton's  minor 
poems,  which  had  hitherto  been  neglected,  exer- 


FROM  POPE  TO  FRENCH  REVOLUTION.  195 

cised  a  great  influence  on  Collins  and  Gray.  Col- 
lins's  Ode  to  Simplicity  was  written  in  the  stanza  of 
Milton's  Nativity,  and  his  exquisite  unrimed  Ode 
to  Evening  was  a  study  in  versification,  after  Mil- 
ton's translation  of  Horace's  Ode  to  Pyrrha,  in  the 
original  meters.  Shakspere  began  to  to  be  studied 
more  reverently:  numerous  critical  editions  of 
his  plays  were  issued,  and  Garrick  restored  his 
pure  text  to  the  stage.  Collins  was  an  enthu- 
siastic student  of  Shakspere,  and  one  of  his  sweet- 
est poems,  the  Dirge  in  Cymbeline,  was  inspired 
by  the  tragedy  of  Cymbeline.  The  verse  of  Gray, 
Collins,  and  the  Warton  brothers,  abounds  in 
verbal  reminiscences  of  Shakspere;  but  their 
genius  was  not  allied  to  his,  being  exclusively 
lyrical,  and  not  at  all  dramatic.  The  Muse  of  this 
romantic  school  was  Fancy  rather  than  Passion. 
A  thoughtful  melancholy,  a  gentle,  scholarly  pen- 
siveness,  the  spirit  of  Milton's  //  Penseroso, 
pervades  their  poetry.  Gray  was  a  fastidious 
scholar,  who  produced  very  little,  but  that  little 
of  the  finest  quality.  His  famous  Elegy,  express- 
ing a  meditative  mood  in  language  of  the  choicest 
perfection,  is  the  representative  poem  of  the 
second  half  of  the  iSth  century,  as  the  Rape  of 
the  Lock  is  of  the  first.  The  romanticists  were 
quietists,  and  their  scenery  is  characteristic. 
They  loved  solitude  and  evening,  the  twilight 
vale,  the  mossy  hermitage,  ruins,  glens,  and  caves. 
Their  style  was  elegant  and  academic,  retaining  a 
little  of  the  stilted  poetic  diction  of  their  classical 


196  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

forerunners.  Personification  and  periphrasis  were 
their  favorite  mannerisms :  Collins's  Odes  were 
largely  addressed  to  abstractions,  such  as  Fear, 
Pity,  Liberty,  Mercy,  and  Simplicity.  A  poet  in 
their  dialect  was  always  a  "bard;"  a  countryman 
was  "  the  untutored  swain,"  and  a  woman  was  a 
"  nymph  "  or  ''the  fair,"  just  as  in  Dryden  and 
Pope.  Thomson  is  perpetually  mindful  of  Vergil, 
and  afraid  to  speak  simply.  He  uses  too  many 
Latin  epithets,  like  amusive  and  precipitant,  and 
calls  a  fish-line 

The  floating  line  snatched  from  the  hoary  steed." 

They  left  much  for  Cowper  and  Wordsworth  to 
do  in  the  way  of  infusing  the  new  blood  of  a 
strong,  racy  English  into  our  exhausted  poetic 
diction.  Their  poetry  is  impersonal,  bookish, 
literary.  It  lacks  emotional  force,  except  now 
and  then  in  Gray's  immortal  Elegy,  in  his  Ode  on 
a  Distant  Prospect  of  Eton  College,  in  Collins's 
lines,  On  the  Death  of  Thomson,  and  his  little  ode 
beginning,  "  How  sleep  the  brave  ?" 

The  new  school  did  not  lack  critical  expounders 
of  its  principles  and  practice.  Joseph  Warton 
published,  in  1756,  the  first  volume  of  his  Essay  on 
the  Genius  and  Writings  of  Pope,  an  elaborate  re- 
view of  Pope's  writings  seriatim,  doing  him  cer- 
tainly full  justice,  but  ranking  him  below  Shaks- 
pere,  Spenser,  and  Milton.  "  Wit  and  satire," 
wrote  Warton,  "are  transitory  and  perishable,  but 
nature  and  passion  are  eternal.  .  .  .  He  stuck  to 


FROM  POPE  TO  FRENCH  REVOLUTION.  197 

describing  modern  manners  ;  but  those  manners,  be- 
cause they  are  familiar,  artificial,  and  polished,  are, 
in  their  very  nature,  unfit  for  any  lofty  effort  of 
the  Muse.  Whatever  poetical  enthusiasm  he 
actually  possessed  he  withheld  and  stifled.  Sure- 
ly it  is  no  narrow  and  niggardly  encomium  to  say, 
he  is  the  great  Poet  of  Reason,  the  first  of  Ethical 
authors  in  verse."  Warton  illustrated  his  critical 
positions  by  quoting  freely  not  only  from  Spenser 
and  Milton,  but  from  recent  poets,  like  Thomson, 
Gray,  Collins,  and  Dyer.  He  testified  that  the 
Seasons  had  "  been  very  instrumental  in  diffusing 
a  general  taste  for  the  beauties  of  nature  and 
landscape."  It  was  symptomatic  of  the  change  in 
literary  taste  that  the  natural  or  English  school  of 
lansdcape  gardening  now  began  to  displace  the 
French  and  Dutch  fashion  of  clipped  hedges,  reg- 
ular parterres,  etc.,  and  that  Gothic  architecture 
came  into  repute.  Horace  Walpole  was  a  vir- 
tuoso in  Gothic  art,  and  in  his  castle,  at  Strawberry 
Hill,  he  made  a  collection  of  ancient  armor, 
illuminated  MSS.,  and  bric-a-brac  of  all  kinds. 
Gray  had  been  Walpole's  traveling  companion  in 
France  and  Italy,  and  the  two  had  quarreled  and 
separated,  but  were  afterward  reconciled.  From 
Walpole's  private  printing-press,  at  Strawberry 
Hill,  Gray's  two  "  sister  odes,"  the  Bard  and 
the  Progress  of  Poesy,  were  first  printed,  in  1757. 
Both  Gray  and  Walpole  were  good  correspond- 
ents, and  their  printed  letters  are  among  the  most 
delightful  literature  of  the  kind. 


198  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

The  central  figure  among  the  English  men  of 
letters  of  that  generation  was  Samuel  Johnson 
(1709-84),  whose  memory  has  been  preserved  less 
by  his  own  writings  than  by  James  Boswell's 
famous  Life  of  Johnson,  published  in  1791.  Bos- 
well  was  a  Scotch  laird  and  advocate,  who  first  met 
Johnson  in  London,  when  the  larter  was  fifty-four 
years  old.  Boswell  was  not  a  very  wise  or  witty 
person,  but  he  reverenced  the  worth  and  intellect 
which  shone  through  his  subject's  uncouth  ex- 
terior. He  followed  him  about,  note-book  in 
hand,  bore  all  his  snubbings  patiently,  and  made 
the  best  biography  ever  written.  It  is  related  that 
the  doctor  once  said  that  if  he  thought  Boswell 
meant  to  write  his  life,  he  should  prevent  it  by  tak- 
ing BoswelTs.  And  yet  Johnson's  own  writings  and 
this  biography  of  him  have  changed  places  in  rel- 
ative importance  so  completely,  that  Carlyle  pre- 
dicted that  the  former  would  soon  be  reduced  to 
notes  on  the  latter;  and  Macaulay  said  that  the 
man  who  was  known  to  his  contemporaries  as  a 
great  writer  was  known  to  posterity  as  an  agree- 
able companion. 

Johnson  was  one  of  those  rugged,  eccentric,  self- 
developed  characters,  so  common  among  the  En- 
glish. He  was  the  son  of  a  Lichfield  book-seller, 
and  after  a  course  at  Oxford,  which  was  cut  short 
by  poverty,  and  an  unsuccessful  career  as  a 
school-master,  he  had  come  up  to  London,  in  1737, 
where  he  supported  himself  for  many  years  as  a 
book-seller's  hack.  Gradually  his  great  learning 


FROM  POPE  TO  FRENXH  REVOLUTION.     199 

and  abilities,  his  ready  social  wit  and  powers  as  a 
talker,  caused  his  company  to  be  sought  at  the 
tables  of  those  whom  he  called  "  the  great."  He 
was  a  clubbable  man,  and  he  drew  about  him 
at  the  tavern  a  group  of  the  most  distinguished 
intellects  of  the  time,  Edmund  Burke,  the  orator 
and  statesman,  Oliver  Goldsmith,  Sir  Joshua  Rey- 
nolds, the  portrait  painter,  and  David  Garrick,  the 
great  actor,  who  had  been  a  pupil  in  Johnson's 
school,  near  Lichfield.  Johnson  was  the  typical 
John  Bull  of  the  last  century.  His  oddities,  vir- 
tues, and  prejudices  were  thoroughly  English. 
He  hated  Frenchmen,  Scotchmen,  and  Americans, 
and  had  a  cockneyish  attachment  to  London. 
He  was  a  high  Tory,  and  an  orthodox  churchman; 
he  loved  a  lord  in  the  abstract,  and  yet  he  as- 
serted a  sturdy  independence  against  any  lord  in 
particular.  He  was  deeply  religious,  but  had  an 
abiding  fear  of  death.  He  was  burly  in  person, 
and  slovenly  in  dress,  his  shirt-frill  always 
covered  with  snuff.  He  was  a  great  diner  out, 
an  inordinate  tea-drinker,  and  a  voracious  and 
untidy  feeder.  An  inherited  scrofula,  which  often 
took  the  form  of  hypochondria  and  threatened  to 
affect  his  brain,  deprived  him  of  control  over 
the  muscles  of  his  face.  Boswell  describes  how 
his  features  worked,  how  he  snorted,  grunted, 
whistled,  and  rolled  about  in  his  chair  when  get- 
ting ready  to  speak.  He  records  his  minutest 
traits,  such  as  his  habit  of  pocketing  the  orange 
peels  at  the  club,  and  his  superstitious  way  of  touch- 


2oo  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

ing  all  the  posts  between  his  house  and  the  Mitre 
Tavern,  going  back  to  do  it,  if  he  skipped  one  by 
chance.  Though  bearish  in  his  manners  and 
arrogant  in  dispute,  especially  when  talking  "  for 
victory,"  Johnson  had  a  large  and  tender  heart. 
He  loved  his  ugly,  old  wife — twenty-one  years  his 
senior — and  he  had  his  house  full  of  unfortunates 
— a  blind  woman,  an  invalid  surgeon,  a  destitute 
widow,  a  negro  servant — whom  he  supported  for 
many  years,  and  bore  with  all  their  ill-humors 
patiently. 

Among  Johnson's  numerous  writings  the  ones 
best  entitled  to  remembrance  are,  perhaps,  his 
Dictionary  of  the  English  Language,  1755;  his 
moral  tale,  Rasselas,  1759;  the  introduction  to  his 
Edition  of  Shakspere,  1765;  and  his  Lives  of  the 
Poets,  1781.  Johnson  wrote  a  sonorous,  cadenced 
prose,  full  of  big  Latin  words  and  balanced 
clauses.  Here  is  a  sentence,  for  example,  from 
his  Visit  to  the  Hebrides  :  4<  We  were  now  treading 
that  illustrious  island  which  was  once  the  lu- 
minary of  the  Caledonian  regions,  whence  savage 
clans  and  roving  barbarians  derived  the  benefits 
of  knowledge  and  the  blessings  of  religion.  To 
abstract  the  mind  from  all  local  emotion  would  be 
impossible,  if  it  were  endeavored,  and  would  be 
foolish,  if  it  were  possible."  The  difference  between 
his  colloquial  style  and  his  book  style  is  well  illus- 
trated in  the  instance  cited  by  Macaulay.  Speak- 
ing of  Villier's  Rehearsal,  Johnson  said,  "  It  has  not 
wit  enough  to  keep  it  sweet;"  then  paused  and 


FROM  POPE  TO  FRENCH  REVOLUTION.     201 

added — translating  English  into  Johnsonese — "  it 
has  not  vitality  sufficient  to  preserve  it  from 
putrefaction."  There  is  more  of  this  in  Johnson's 
Rambler  and  Idler  papers  than  in  his  latest  work, 
the  Lives  of  the  Poets.  In  this  he  showed  himself 
a  sound  and  judicious  critic,  though  with  decided 
limitations.  His  understanding  was  solid,  but  he 
was  a  thorough  classicist,  and  his  taste  in  poetry 
was  formed  on  Pope.  He  was  unjust  to  Milton 
and  to  his  own  contemporaries,  Gray,  Collins, 
Shenstone,  and  Dyer.  He  had  no  sense  of  the 
higher  and  subtler  graces  of  romantic  poetry,  and 
he  had  a  comical  indifference  to  the  "  beauties  of 
nature."  When  Boswell  once  ventured  to  remark 
that  poor  Scotland  had,  at  least,  some  "  noble, 
wild  prospects,"  the  doctor  replied  that  the  noblest 
prospect  a  Scotchman  ever  saw  was  the  road  that 
led  to  London. 

The  English  novel  of  real  life  had  its  origin  at 
this  time.  Books  like  De  Foe's  Robinson  Crusoe, 
Captain  Singleton,  Journal  of  the  Plague,  etc., 
were  tales  of  incident  and  adventure  rather  than 
novels.  The  novel  deals  primarily  with  character 
and  with  the  interaction  of  characters  upon  one 
another,  as  developed  by  a  regular  plot.  The  first 
English  novelist,  in  the  modern  sense  of  the  word, 
was  Samuel  Richardson,  a  printer,  who  began  au- 
thorship in  his  fiftieth  year  with  his  Pamela,  the 
story  of  a  young  servant  girl,  who  resisted  the  se- 
ductions of  her  master,  and  finally,  as  the  reward 
of  her  virtue,  became  his  wife.  Clarissa  Harlowe, 


202  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

1748,  was  the  tragical  history  of  a  high  spirited 
young  lady,  who  being  driven  from  home  by  her 
family,  because  she  refused  to  marry  the  suitor 
selected  for  her,  fell  into  the  toils  of  Lovelace,  an 
accomplished  rake.  After  struggling  heroically 
against  every  form  of  artifice  and  violence,  she 
was  at  last  drugged  and  ruined.  She  died  of  a 
broken  heart,  and  Lovelace,  borne  down  by  remorse, 
was  killed  in  a  duel  by  a  cousin  of  Clarissa.  Sir 
Charles  Grandison,  1753,  was  Richardson's  por- 
trait of  an  ideal  fine  gentleman,  whose  stately 
doings  fill  eight  volumes,  but  who  seems  to  the 
modern  reader  a  bore  and  a  prig.  All  of  these 
novels  were  written  in  the  form  of  letters  passing 
between  the  characters,  a  method  which  fitted 
Richardson's  subjective  cast  of  mind.  He  knew 
little  of  life,  but  he  identified  himself  intensely 
with  his  principal  character  and  produced  a  strong 
effect  by  minute,  accumulated  touches.  Clarissa 
Harlowe  is  his  masterpiece,  though  even  in  that 
the  situation  is  painfully  prolonged,  the  heroine's 
virtue  is  self-conscious  and  rhetorical,  and  there 
is  something  almost  ludicrously  unnatural  in  the 
copiousness  with  which  she  pours  herself  out  in 
gushing  epistles  to  her  female  correspondent  at 
the  very  moment  when  she  is  beset  with  dangers, 
persecuted,  agonized,  and  driven  nearly  mad.  In 
Richardson's  novels  appears,  for  the  first  time, 
that  sentimentalism  which  now  began  to  infect 
European  literature.  Pamela  was  translated  into 
French  and  German,  and  fell  in  with  that  current 


FROM  POPE  TO  FRENCH  REVOLUTION.     203 

of  popular  feeling  which  found  fullest  expression 
in  Rousseau's  Nouvelle  Heloise,  1759,  and  Goethe's 
Leiden  des  Jungen  Werther,  which  set  all  the  world 
a-weeping  in  1774. 

Coleridge  said  y^at  to  pass  from  Richardson's 
books  to  those  of  Henry  Fielding  was  like  going 
into  the,  fresh  air  from  a  close  room  heated  by 
stoves.  Richardson,  it  has  been  affirmed,  knew 
man,  but  Fielding  knew  men.  The  latter's  first 
novel,  Joseph  Andrews,  1742,  was  begun  as  a 
travesty  of  Pamela.  The  hero,  a  brother  of 
Pamela,  was  a  young  footman  in  the  employ  of 
Lady  Booby,  from  whom  his  virtue  suffered  a  like 
assault  to  that  made  upon  Pamela's  by  her  master. 
This  reversal  of  the  natural  situation  was  in  itself 
full  of  laughable  possibilities,  had  the  book  gone 
on  simply  as  a  burlesque.  But  the  exuberance  of 
Fielding's  genius  led  him  beyond  his  original  de- 
sign. This  hero,  leaving  Lady  Booby's  service, 
goes  traveling  with  good  Parson  Adams,  and  is 
soon  engaged  in  a  series  of  comical  and  rather 
boisterous  adventures. 

Fielding  had  seen  life,  and  his  characters  were 
painted  from  the  life  with  a  bold,  free  hand.  He 
was  a  gentleman  by  birth,  and  had  made  ac- 
quaintance with  society  and  the  town  in  1727, 
when  he  was  a  handsome,  stalwart  young  fellow, 
with  high  animal  spirits  and  a  great  appetite  for 
pleasure.  He  soon  ran  himself  into  debt  and  began 
writing  for  the  stage;  married,  and  spent  his  wife's 
fortune,  living  for  awhile  in  much  splendor  as  a 


204  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

country  gentleman,  and  afterward  in  a  reduced 
condition  as  a  rural  justice  with  a  salary  of  ^500 
of  "the  dirtiest  money  on  earth."  Fielding's  mas- 
terpiece was  Tom  Jones,  1749,  and  it  remains  one 
of  the  best  of  English  novels^  Its  hero  is  very 
much  after  Fielding's  own  heart,  wild,  spendthrift, 
warm-hearted,  forgiving,  and  greatly  in  need  of 
forgiveness.  The  same  type  of  character,  with  the 
lines  deepened,  re-appears  in  Captain  Booth,  in 
Amelia,  1751,  the  heroine  of  which  is  a  portrait  of 
Fielding's  wife.  With  Tom  Jones  is  contrasted 
Blifil,  the  embodiment  of  meanness,  hypocrisy,  and 
cowardice.  Sophia  Western,  the  heroine,  is  one  of 
Fielding's  most  admirable  creations.  For  the  reg- 
ulated morality  of  Richardson,  with  its  somewhat 
old-grannified  air,  Fielding  substituted  instinct. 
His  virtuous  characters  are  virtuous  by  impulse 
only,  and  his  ideal  of  character  is  manliness.  In 
Jonathan  Wild  the  hero  is  a  highwayman.  This 
novel  is  ironical,  a  sort  of  prose  mock-heroic,  and 
is  one  of  the  strongest,  though  certainly  the  least 
pleasing,  of  Fielding's  writings. 

Tobias  Smollett  was  an  inferior  Fielding  with  a 
difference.  He  was  a  Scotch  ship-surgeon  and 
had  spent  some  time  in  the  West  Indies.  He  in- 
troduced into  fiction  the  now  familiar  figure  of  the 
British  tar,  in  the  persons  of  Tom  Bowling  and 
Commodore  Trunnion,  as  Fielding  had  introduced, 
in  Squire  Western,  the  equally  national  type  of  the 
hard-swearing,  deep-drinking,  fox-hunting  Tory 
squire.  Both  Fielding  and  Smollett  were  of  the 


FROM  POPE  TO  FRENCH  REVOLUTION.     205 

hearty  British  "beef-and-beer "  school;  their 
novels  are  downright,  energetic,  coarse,  and 
high-blooded;  low  life,  physical  life,  runs  riot 
through  their  pages — tavern  brawls,  the  breaking  of 
pates,  and  the  off-hand  courtship  of  country 
wenches.  Smollett's  books,  such  as  Roderick 
Random,  1748,  Peregrine  Pickle,  1751,  and  Ferdi- 
na?id  Ceunt  Fathom,  1752,  were  more  purely  stories 
of  broadly  comic  adventure  than  Fielding's.  The 
latter's  view  of  life  was  by  no  means  idyllic;  but 
with  Smollett  this  English  realism  ran  into  vul- 
garity and  a  hard  Scotch  literalness,  and  character 
was  pushed  to  caricature.  "The  generous  wine 
of  Fielding,"  says  Taine,  "  in  Smollett's  hands  be- 
comes brandy  of  the  dram-shop."  A  partial  ex- 
ception to  this  is  to  be  found  in  his  last  and  best 
novel,  Humphrey  Clinker,  1770.  The  influence  of 
Cervantes  and  of  the  French  novelist,  Le  Sage, 
who  finished  his  Adventures  of  Gil  jBlas  in  1735, 
are  very  perceptible  in  Smollett. 

A  genius  of  much  finer  mold  was  Lawrence 
Sterne,  the  author  of  Tristram  Shandy,  1759-67, 
and  the  Sentimental  Journey,  1768.  Tristram 
Shandy  is  hardly  a  novel:  the  story  merely  serves 
to  hold  together  a  number  ot  characters,  such  as 
Uncle  Toby  and  Corporal  Trim,  conceived  with 
rare  subtlety  and  originality.  Sterne's  chosen 
province  was  the  whimsical,  and  his  great  model 
was  Rabelais.  His  books  are  full  of  digressions, 
breaks,  surprises,  innuendoes,  double  meanings, 
mystifications,  and  all  manner  of  odd  turns. 


206  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

Coleridge  and  Carlyle  unite  in  pronouncing  him. 
a  great  humorist.  Thackeray  says  that  he  was  only 
a  great  jester.  Humor  is  the  laughter  of  the 
heart,  and  Sterne's  pathos  is  closely  interwoven 
with  his  humor.  He  was  the  foremost  of  English 
sentimentalists,  and  he  had  that  taint  of  insincerity 
which  distinguishes  sentimentalism  from  genuine 
sentiment,  like  Goldsmith' s,  for  example.  Sterne, 
in  life,  was  selfish,  heartless,  and  untrue.  A  cler- 
gyman, his  worldliness  and  vanity  and  the  in- 
decency of  his  writings  were  a  scandal  to  the 
Church,  though  his  sermons  were  both  witty  and 
affecting.  He  enjoyed  the  titilation  of  his  own 
emotions,  and  he  had  practiced  so  long  at  detect- 
ing the  latent  pathos  that  lies  in  the  expression  of 
dumb  things  and  of  poor,  patient  animals,  that  he 
could  summon  the  tear  of  sensibility  at  the 
thought  of  a  discarded  postchaise,  a  dead  donkey, 
a  starling  in  a  cage,  or  of  Uncle  Toby  putting  a 
house  fly  out  of  the  window,  and  saying,  "There 
is  room  enough  in  the  world  for  thee  and  me." 
It  is  a  high  proof  of  his  cleverness  that  he  generally 
succeeds  in  raising  the  desired  feeling  in  his  read- 
ers even  from  such  trivial  occasions.  He  was  a 
minute  philosopher,  his  philosophy  was  kindly,  and 
he  taught  the  delicate  art  of  making  much  out  of 
little.  Less  coarse  than  Fielding,  he  is  far  more 
corrupt.  Fielding  goes  bluntly  to  the  point; 
Sterne  lingers  among  the  temptations  and  sus- 
pends the  expectation  to  tease  and  excite  it.  For- 
bidden fruit  had  a  relish  for  him,  and  his  pages 


FROM  POPE  TO  FRENCH  REVOLUTION.      207 

seduce.  He  is  full  of  good  sayings,  both  tender 
and  witty.  It  was  Sterne,  for  example,  who  wrote, 
"God  tempers  the  wind  to  the  shorn  lamb." 

A  very  different  writer  was  Oliver  Goldsmith, 
whose  Vicar  of  Wakefield,  1766,  was  the  earliest, 
and  is  still  one  of  the  best,  novels  of  domestic  and 
rural  life.  The  book,  like  its  author,  was  thor- 
oughly Irish,  full  of  bulls  and  inconsistencies. 
Very  improbable  things  happened  in  it  with  a 
cheerful  defiance  of  logic.  But  its  characters 
are  true  to  nature,  drawn  with  an  idyllic  sweet- 
ness and  purity,  and  with  touches  of  a  most  loving 
humor.  Its  hero,  Dr.  Primrose,  was  painted  after 
Goldsmith's  father,  a  poor  clergyman  of  the  En- 
glisl.  Church  in  Ireland,  and  the  original,  likewise, 
of  the  country  parson  in  Goldsmith's  Deserted 
Village,  1770,  who  was  "passing  rich  on  forty 
pounds  a  year."  This  poem,  though  written  in 
the  fashionable  couplet  of  Pope,  and  even  con- 
taining a  few  verses  contributed  by  Dr.  Johnson 
— so  that  it  was  not  at  all  in  line  with  the  work  of 
the  romanticists — did,  perhaps,  as  much  as  any 
thing  of  Gray  or  of  Collins  to  recall  English  poetry 
to  the  simplicity  and  freshness  of  country  life. 

Except  for  the  comedies  of  Sheridan  and  Gold, 
smith,  and,  perhaps,  a  few  other  plays,  the  stage 
had  now  utterly  declined.  The  novel,  which  is 
dramatic  in  essence,  though  not  in  form,  began  to 
take  its  place,  and  to  represent  life,  though  less  in- 
tensely, yet  more  minutely,  than  the  theater  could 
do.  In  the  novelists  of  the  i8th  century,  the  life 


208  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

of  the  people,  as  distinguished  from  "society"  or 
the  upper  classes,  began  to  invade  literature. 
Richardson  was  distinctly  a  bourgeois  writer,  and 
his  contemporaries — Fielding,  Smollett.  Sterne,  and 
Goldsmith — ranged  over  a  wide  variety  of  ranks 
and  conditions.  This  is  one  thing  which  distin- 
guishes the  literature  of  the  second  half  of  the  i8th 
century  from  that  of  the  first,  as  well  as  in  some 
degree  from  that  of  all  previous  centuries.  Among 
the  authors  of  this  generation  whose  writings  be- 
longed to  other  departments  of  thought  than  pure 
literature  may  be  mentioned,  in  passing,  the  great 
historian,  Edward  Gibbon,  whose  Decline  and  Fall 
of  the  Roman  Empire  was  published  from  1776-88, 
and  Edmund  Burke,  whose  political  speeches  and 
pamphlets  possess  a  true  literary  quality.  The  ro- 
mantic poets  had  addressed  the  imagination  rather 
than  the  heart.  It  was  reserved  for  two  men — a 
contrast  to  one  another  in  almost  every  respect — 
to  bring  once  more  into  British  song  a  strong  indi- 
vidual feeling,  and  with  it  a  new  warmth  and  di- 
rectness of  speech.  These  were  William  Cowper 
(1731-1800)  and  Robert  Burns  (1759-96).  Cowper 
spoke  out  of  his  own  life  experience,  his  agony,  his 
love,  his  worship  and  despair;  and  straightway  the 
varnish  that  had  glittered  over  all  our  poetry  since 
the  time  of  Dryden  melted  away.  Cowper  had 
scribbled  verses  when  he  was  a  young  law  student 
at  the  Middle  Temple  in  London,  and  he  had  con- 
tributed to  the  Olney  Hymns,  published  in  1779  by 
his  friend  and  pastor,  the  Rev.  John  Newton;  but 


FROM  POPE  TO  FRENCH  REVOLUTION.     209 

he  only  began  to  write  poetry  in  earnest  when  he 
was  nearly  fifty  years  old.  In  1782,  the  date  of  his 
first  volume,  he  said,  in  a  letter  to  a  friend,  that  he 
had  read  but  one  English  poet  during  the  past 
twenty  years.  Perhaps,  therefore,  of  all  English 
poets  of  equal  culture,  Cowper  owed  the  least  im- 
pulse to  books  and  the  most  to  the  need  of  utter- 
ing his  inmost  thoughts  and  feelings.  Cowper  had 
a  most  unhappy  life.  As  a  child,  he  was  shy,  sen- 
sitive, and  sickly,  and  suffered  much  from  bullying 
and  fagging  at  a  school  whither  he  was  sent  after 
his  mother's  death.  This  happened  when  he  was 
six  years  old;  and  in  his  affecting  lines  written  On 
Receipt  of  My  Mother's  Picture,  he  speaks  of  him- 
self as  a 

"  Wretch  even  then,  life's  journey  just  begun." 

In  1763  he  became  insane  and  was  sent  to  an  asy- 
lum, where  he  spent  a  year.  Judicious  treatment 
restored  him  to  sanity,  but  he  came  out  a  broken 
man  and  remained  for  the  rest  of  his  life  an  inva- 
lid, unfitted  for  any  active  occupation.  His  dis- 
ease took  the  form  of  religious  melancholy.  He 
had  two  recurrences  of  madness,  and  both  times 
made  attempts  upon  his  life.  At  Huntingdon,  and 
afterward  at  Olney,  in  Buckinghamshire,  he  found 
a  home  with  the  Unwin  family,  whose  kindness  did 
all  which  the  most  soothing  and  delicate  care  could 
do  to  heal  his  wounded  spirit.  His  two  poems  To 
Mary  Unwin,  together  with  the  lines  on  his  moth- 
er's picture,  were  almost  the  first  examples  of  deep 
14 


2io  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

and  tender  sentiment  in  the  lyrical  poetry  of  the 
last  century.  Cowper  found  relief  from  the  black 
thoughts  that  beset  him  only  in  an  ordered  round 
of  quiet  household  occupations.  He  corresponded 
indefatigably,  took  long  walks  through  the  neigh- 
borhood, read,  sang,  and  conversed  with  Mrs.  Un- 
win  and  his  friend,  Lady  Austin;  and  amused  him- 
self with  carpentry,  gardening,  and  raising  pets,  es- 
pecially hares,  of  which  gentle  animals  he  grew  very 
fond.  All  these  simple  tastes,  in  which  he  found 
for  a  time  a  refuge  and  a  sheltered  happiness,  are 
reflected  in  his  best  poem,  The  Task,  1785.  Cow- 
per is  the  poet  of  the  family  affections,  of  domestic 
life,  and  rural  retirement;  the  laureate  of  the  fire- 
side, the  tea-table,  the  evening  lamp,  the  garden,  the 
green-house,  and  the  rabbit-coop.  He  draws  with 
elegance  and  precision  a  chair,  a  clock,  a  harpsi- 
chord, a  barometer,  a  piece  of  needle-work.  But 
Cowper  was  an  out-door  as  well  as  an  in-door  man. 
The  Olney  landscape  was  tame,  a  fat,  agricultural 
region,  where  the  sluggish  Ouse  wound  between 
plowed  fields  and  the  horizon  was  bounded  by 
low  hills.  Nevertheless  Cowper's  natural  descrip- 
tions are  at  once  more  distinct  and  more  imagina- 
tive than  Thomson's.  The  Task  reflects,  also,  the 
new  philanthropic  spirit,  the  enthusiasm  of  human- 
ity, the  feeling  of  the  brotherhood  of  men  to  which 
Rousseau  had  given  expression  in  France  and  which 
issued  in  the  French  Revolution.  In  England  this 
was  the  time  of  Wilberforce.  the  antislavery  agi- 
tator; of  Whitefield,  the  eloquent  revival  preacher; 


FROM  POPE  TO  FRENCH  REVOLUTION.     211 

of  John  and  Charles  Wesley,  and  of  the  Evangel- 
ical and  Methodist  movements  which  gave  new  life 
to  the  English  Church.  John  Newton,  the  curate 
of  Olney  and  the  keeper  of  Cowper's  conscience, 
was  one  of  the  leaders  of  the  Evangelicals  ;  and 
Cowper's  first  volume  of  Table  Talk  and  other  po- 
ems, 1782,  written  under  Newton's  inspiration,  was 
a  series  of  sermons  in  verse,  somewhat  intolerant  of 
all  worldly  enjoyments,  such  as  hunting,  dancing, 
and  theaters.  "  God  made  the  country  and  man 
made  the  town,"  he  wrote.  He  was  a  moralizing 
poet,  and  his  morality  was  sometimes  that  of  the 
invalid  and  the  recluse.  Byron  called  him  a  "  cod- 
dled poet."  And,  indeed,  there  is  a  suspicion  of 
gruel  and  dressing-gowns  about  him.  He  lived 
much  among  women,  and  his  sufferings  had  refined 
him  to  a  feminine  delicacy.  But  there  is  no  sick' 
liness  in  his  poetry,  and  he  retained  a  charming 
playful  humor — displayed  in  his  excellent  comic 
ballad,  John  Gilpin  ;  and  Mrs.  Browning  has  sung 
of  him, 

"  How  when  one  by  one  sweet  sounds  and  wandering  lights 

departed 
He  bore  no  less  a  loving  face,  because  so  broken-hearted." 

At  the  close  of  the  year  1786  a  young  Scotch- 
man, named  Samuel  Rose,  called  upon  Cowper  at 
Olney,  and  left  with  him  a  small  volume,  which  had 
appeared  at  Edinburgh  during  the  past  summer, 
entitled  Poems  chiefly  in  the  Scottish  Dialect,  by 
Robert  Burns.  Cowper  read  the  book  through 


2i2  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

twice,  and,  though  somewhat  bothered  by  the  dia- 
lect, pronounced  it  a  "very  extraordinary  produc- 
tion." This  momentary  flash,  as  of  an  electric 
spark,  marks  the  contact  not  only  of  the  two  chief 
British  poets  of  their  generation,  but  of  two  litera- 
tures. Scotch  poets,  like  Thomson  and  Beattie, 
had  written  in  Southern  English,  and,  as  Carlyle 
said,  ///  vacuo,  that  is,  with  nothing  specially  na- 
tional in  their  work.  Burns's  sweet  though  rugged 
Doric  first  secured  the  vernacular  poetry  of  his 
country  a  hearing  beyond  the  border.  He  had,  to 
be  sure,  a  whole  literature  of  popular  songs  and 
ballads  behind  him,  and  his  immediate  models  were 
Allan  Ramsay  and  Robert  Ferguson;  but  these  re- 
mained provincial,  while  Burns  became  universal. 
He  was  born  in  Ayrshire,  on  the  banks  of  "  bon- 
ny Doon,"  in  a  clay  biggin  not  far  from  "  Alloway's 
auld  haunted  kirk,"  the  scene  of  the  witch  dance 
in  Tarn  O '  Shanter.  His  father  was  a  hard-headed, 
God-fearing  tenant  farmer,  whose  life  and  that  of 
his  sons  was  a  harsh  struggle  with  poverty.  The 
crops  failed;  the  landlord  pressed  for  his  rent;  for 
weeks  at  a  time  the  family  tasted  no  meat;  yet  this 
life  of  toil  was  lightened  by  love  and  homely  pleas- 
ures. In  the  Cotter's  Saturday  Night,  Burns  has 
drawn  a  beautiful  picture  of  his  parents'  household, 
the  rest  that  came  at  the  week's  end,  and  the  fam- 
ily worship  about  the  "wee  bit  ingle,  blinkin'  bon- 
nily."  Robert  was  handsome,  wild,  and  witty.  H« 
was  universally  susceptible,  and  his  first  songs,  like 
his  last,  were  of  "the  lasses."  His  head  had  been 


FROM  POPE  TO'  FRENCH  REVOLUTION.     213 

stuffed,  in  boyhood,  with  "  tales  and  songs  concern- 
ing devils,  ghosts,  faiiies,  brownies,  witches,  war- 
locks, spunkies,  kelpies,  elf-candles,  dead-lights," 
etc.,  told  him  by  one  Jenny  Wilson,  an  old  woman 
who  lived  in  the  family.  His  ear  was  full  of  an- 
cient Scottish  tunes,  and  as  soon  as  he  fell  in  love 
he  began  to  make  poetry  as  naturally  as  a  bird 
sings.  He  composed  his  verses  while  following  the 
plow  or  working  in  the  stack-yard;  or,  at  even- 
ing, balancing  on  two  legs  of  his  chair  and  watch- 
ing the  light  of  a  peat  fire  play  over  the  reeky  walls 
of  the  cottage.  Burns's  love  songs  are  in  many 
keys,  ranging  from  strains  of  the  most  pure  and 
exalted  passion,  like  Ae  Fond  Kiss  and  To  Mary  in 
Heaven,  to  such  loose  ditties  as  When  Januar 
Winds  and  Green  Grow  the  Rashes  O. 

Burns  liked  a  glass  almost  as  well  as  a  lass,  and 
at  Mauchline,  where  he  carried  on  a  farm  with  his 
brother  Gilbert,  after  their  father's  death,  he  be- 
gan to  seek  a  questionable  relief  from  the  pressure 
of  daily  toil  and  unkind  fates,  in  the  convivialities 
of  the  tavern.  There,  among  the  wits  of  the 
Mauchline  Club,  farmers'  sons,  shepherds  from  the 
uplands,  and  the  smugglers  who  swarmed  over  the 
west  coast,  he  would  discuss  politics  and  farming, 
recite  his  verses,  and  join  in  the  singing  and  rant- 
ing, while 

"  Bousin  o'er  the  nappy, 

And  gettin"  fou  and  unco  happy." 

To  these  experiences  we  owe  not  only  those  ex- 
cellent drinking  songs,  John  Barleycorn  and  Willie 


214  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

Brewed  a  Peck  <?'  Maut,  but  the  headlong  fun  of 
Tarn  O'S/ianter,  and  the  visions,  grotesquely  ter- 
rible, of  Death  and  Dr.  Hornbook,  and  the  dra- 
matic humor  of  the  Jolly  Beggars.  Covvper  had  cel- 
ebrated "  the  cup  which  cheers  but  not  inebriates." 
Burns  sang  the  praises  of  Scotch  Drink.  Cowper 
was  a  stranger  to  Burns's  high  animal  spirits,  and 
his  robust  enjoyment  of  life.  He  had  affections, 
but  no  passions.  At  Mauchline,  Burns,  whose  ir- 
regularities did  not  escape  the  censure  of  the  kirk, 
became  involved,  through  his  friendship  with 
Gavin  Hamilton,  in  the  controversy  between  the 
Old  Light  and  New  Light  clergy.  His  Holy  Fair, 
Holy  Tulzie,  Twa  Herds,  Holy  Willie's  Prayer,  and 
Address  to  the  Unco  Gude,  are  satires  against  big- 
otry and  hypocrisy.  But  in  spite  of  the  rollicking 
profanity  of  his  language,  and  the  violence  of  his 
rebound  against  the  austere  religion  of  Scotland, 
Burns  was  at  bottom  deeply  impressible  by  relig- 
ious ideas,  as  may  be  seen  from  his  Prayer  under 
the  Pressure  of  Violent  Anguish,  and  Prayer  in 
Prospect  of  Death. 

His  farm  turned  out  a  failure,  and  he  was  on 
the  eve  of  sailing  for  Jamaica,  when  the  favor  with 
which  his  volume  of  poems  was  received,  stayed 
his  departure,  and  turned  his  steps  to  Edinburgh. 
There  the  peasant  poet  was  lionized  for  a  winter 
season  by  the  learned  and  polite  society  of  the 
Scotch  capital,  with  results  in  the  end  not  alto- 
gether favorable  to  Burns's  best  interests.  For 
when  society  finally  turned  the  cold  shoulder  on 


FROM  POPE  TO  FRENCH  REVOLUTION.     215 

him,  he  had  to  go  back  to  farming  again,  carrying 
with  him  a  bitter  sense  of  injustice  and  neglect. 
He  leased  a  farm  in  Ellisland,  in  1788,  and  some 
friends  procured  his  appointment  as  exciseman 
for  his  district.  But  poverty,  disappointment,  ir- 
regular habits,  and  broken  health  clouded  his  last 
years,  and  brought  him  to  an  untimely  death  at  the 
age  of  thirty-seven.  He  continued,  however,  to 
pour  forth  songs  of  unequaled  sweetness  and 
force.  "  The  man  sank,"  said  Coleridge,  "  but  the 
poet  was  bright  to  the  last." 

Burns  is  the  best  of  British  song-writers.  His 
songs  are  singable;  they  are  not  merely  lyrical 
poems.  They  were  meant  to  be  sung,  and  they  are 
sung.  They  were  mostly  set  to  old  Scottish  airs, 
and  sometimes  they  were  built  up  from  ancient 
fragments  of  anonymous,  popular  poetry,  a  chorus, 
or  stanza,  or  even  a  single  line.  Such  are,  for  ex- 
ample, Auld  Lang  Syne,  My  Heart's  in  the  High- 
lands, and  Landlady,  Count  the  Laurin.  Burns  had 
a  great,  warm  heart.  His  sins  were  sins  of  passion, 
and  sprang  from  the  same  generous  soil  that  nour- 
ished his  impulsive  virtues.  His  elementary  quali- 
ties as  a  poet  were  sincerity,  a  healthy  openness  to 
all  impressions  of  the  beautiful,  and  a  sympathy 
which  embraced  men,  animals,  and  the  dumb  ob- 
jects of  nature.  His  tenderness  toward  flowers 
and  the  brute  creation  may  be  read  in  his  lines 
To  a  Mountain  Daisy,  To  a  Mouse,  and  The  Auld 
Farmer's  New  Year's  Morning  Salutation  to  his 
Auld  Mare  Maggie.  Next  after  love  and  good  fel- 


2i6  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

lo \vship,  patriotism  is  the  most  frequent  motive  of 
his  song.  Of  his  national  anthem,  Scots  u>ha  hae 
wf  Wallace  bled,  Carlyle  said:  "  So  long  as  there 
is  warm  blood  in  the  heart  of  Scotchman,  or  man, 
it  will  move  in  fierce  thrills  under  this  war  ode." 
Burns's  politics  were  a  singular  mixture  of  senti- 
mental toryism  with  practical  democracy.  A  ro- 
mantic glamour  was  thrown  over  the  fortunes  of 
the  exiled  Stuarts,  and  to  have  been  "  out  "  in  '45 
with  the  Young  Pretender  was  a  popular  thing  in 
parts  of  Scotland.  To  this  purely  poetic  loyalty 
may  be  attributed  such  Jacobite  ballads  of  Burns 
as  Over  the  Water  to  Charlie.  But  his  sober  con- 
victions were  on  the  side  of  liberty  and  human 
brotherhood,  and  are  expressed  in  the  Twa  Dogs, 
the  first  Epistle  to  Davie,  and  A  Mans  a  Man  for 
a'  that.  His  sympathy  with  the  Revolution  led 
him  to  send  four  pieces  of  ordnance,  taken  from  a 
captured  smuggler,  as  a  present  to  the  French 
Convention,  a  piece  of  bravado  which  got  him 
into  difficulties  with  his  superiors  in  the  excise. 
The  poetry  which  Burns  wrote,  not  in  dialect,  but 
in  the  classical  English,  is  in  the  stilted  manner  of 
his  century,  and  his  prose  correspondence  be' rays 
his  lack  of  culture  by  his  constant  lapse  into  rhe- 
torical affectation  and  fine  writing. 

1.  T.  S.  Perry's  English  Literature  in  the  Eight- 
eenth Century. 

2.  James  Thomson.     The  Castle  of  Indolence. 

3.  The  Poems  of  Thomas  Gray. 


FROM  POPE  TO  FRENCH  REVOLUTION.  217 

4.  William  Collins.     Odes. 

5.  The  Six  Chief  Lives  from  Johnson's  Lives  of 
the  Poets.     Edited   by  Matthew  Arnold.     Macmil- 
lan,  1878. 

6.  Boswell's  Life  of  Johnson  [abridged] .     Henry 
Holt  &  Co.,  1878. 

7.  Samuel  Richardson.     Clarissa  Harlowe. 

8.  Henry  Fielding.     Tom  Jones. 

9.  Tobias  Smollett.     Humphrey  Clinker. 

10.  Lawrence  Sterne.     Tristram  Shandy. 

11.  Oliver   Goldsmith.     Vicar   of  Wakefield   and 
Deserted  Village. 

12.  William   Cowper.      The  Task  and  John  Gil- 
pin. 

13.  The  Poems  and  Songs  of  Robert  Burns. 


218  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

FROM    THE    FRENCH    REVOLUTION 
TO  THE  DEATH  OF  SCOTT. 

1789-1832. 

THE  burst  of  creative  activity  at  the  opening  of 
the  i Qth  century  has  but  one  parallel  in  English 
literary  history,  namely,  the  somewhat  similar  flow- 
ering out  of  the  national  genius  in  the  time  of  Elis- 
abeth and  the  first  two  Stuart  kings.  The  later  age 
gave  birth  to  no  supreme  poets,  like  Shakspere  and 
Milton.  It  produced  no  Hamlet  and  no  Paradise 
Lost;  but  it  offers  a  greater  number  of  important 
writers,  a  higher  average  of  excellence,  and  a  wider 
range  and  variety  of  literary  work  than  any  preced- 
ing era.  Wordsworth,  Coleridge,  Scott,  Byron,  Shel- 
ley, and  Keats  are  all  great  names;  while  Southey, 
Landor,  Moore,  Lamb,  and  De  Quincey  would  be 
noteworthy  figures  at  any  period,  and  deserve  a 
fuller  mention  than  can  be  here  accorded  them. 
But  in  so  crowded  a  generation,  selection  becomes 
increasingly  needful,  and  in  the  present  chapter, 
accordingly,  the  emphasis  will  be  laid  upon  the  first- 
named  group  as  not  only  the  most  important,  but 
the  most  representative  of  the  various  tendencies 
of  their  time. 


FRENCH  REVOLUTION  TO  DEATH  OF  SCOTT.  219 

The  conditions  of  literary  work  in  this  century 
have  been  almost  unduly  stimulating.  The  rapid 
advance  in  population,  wealth,  education,  and  the 
means  of  comunication  has  vastly  increased  the 
number  of  readers.  Every  one  who  has  any  thing 
to  say  can  say  it  in  print,  and  is  sure  of  some  sort 
of  a  hearing.  A  special  feature  of  the  time  is  the 
multiplication  of  periodicals.  The  great  London 
dailies,  like  the  Times  and  the  Morning  Post,  which 
were  started  during  the  last  quarter  of  the  iSth 
century,  were  something  quite  new  in  journalism. 
The  first  of  the  modern  reviews,  the  Edinburgh,  was 
established  in  1802,  as  the  organ  of  the  Whig  party 
in  Scotland.  This  was  followed  by  the  London 
Quarterly,  in  1808,  and  by  Blackwood's  Magazine,  in 
1817,  both  in  the  Tory  interest.  The  first  editor 
of  the  Edinburgh  was  Francis  Jeffrey,  who  assem- 
bled about  him  a  distinguished  corps  of  contrib- 
utors, including  the  versatile  Henry  Brougham, 
afterward  a  great  parliamentary  orator  and  lord- 
chancellor  of  England,  and  the  Rev.  Sydney  Smith, 
whose  witty  sayings  are  still  current.  The  first 
editor  of  the  Quarterly  was  William  Gifford,  a  satir- 
ist, who  wrote  the  Baviad  and  Mceviad  in  ridicule 
of  literary  affectations.  He  was  succeeded  in  1824 
by  James  Gibson  Lockhart,  the  son-in-law  of  Wal- 
ter Scott,  and  the  author  of  an  excellent  Life  of 
Scott.  Blackwood's  was  edited  by  John  Wilson, 
Professor  of  Moral  Philosophy  in  the  University 
of  Edinburgh,  who,  under  the  pen-name  of  "Chris- 
topher North,"  contributed  to  his  magazine  a  series 


220  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

of  brilliant,  imaginary  dialogues  between  famous 
characters  of  the  day,  entitled  Nodes  Ambrosiance, 
because  they  were  supposed  to  take  place  at  Am- 
brose's tavern  in  Edinburgh.  These  papers  were 
full  of  a  profuse,  headlong  eloquence,  of  humor,  lit- 
erary criticism,  and  personalities  interspersed  with 
songs  expressive  of  a  roystering  and  convivial  Tory- 
ism and  an  uproarious  contempt  for  Whigs  and 
cockneys.  These  reviews  and  magazines,  and  oth- 
ers which  sprang  up  beside  them,  became  the  nu- 
clei about  which  the  wit  and  scholarship  of  both 
parties  gathered.  Political  controversy  under  the 
Regency  and  the  reign  of  George  IV.  was  thus  car- 
ried on  more  regularly  by  permanent  organs,  and 
no  longer  so  largely  by  privateering,  in  the  shape 
of  pamphlets,  like  Swift's  Public  Spirit  of  the  Allies, 
Johnson's  Taxation  No  Tyranny,  and  Burke's  Re- 
flections on  the  Revolution  in  France.  Nor  did  pol- 
itics by  any  means  usurp  the  columns  of  the  re- 
views. Literature,  art,  science,  the  whole  circle  ot 
human  effort  and  achievement  passed  under  review. 
JBlackwood's,  Frasers,  and  the  other  monthlies, 
published  stories,  poetry,  criticism,  and  correspond- 
ence —  every  thing,  in  short,  which  enters  into 
the  make-up  of  our  magazines  to-day,  except  illus- 
trations. 

Two  main  influences,  of  foreign  origin,  have  left 
their  trace  in  the  English  writers  of  the  first  thirty 
years  of  the  ipth  century,  the  one  communicated 
by  contact  with  the  new  German  literature  of  the 
latter  half  of  the  i8th  century,  and  in  particular 


FRENCH  REVOLUTION  10  DEATH  OF  SCOTT.    221 

with  the  writings  of  Goethe,  Schiller,  and  Kant ; 
the  other  springing  from  the  events  of  the  French 
Revolution.  The  influence  of  German  upon  En- 
glish literature  in  the  iQth  century  was  more  intel- 
lectual and  less  formal  than  that  of  the  Italian 
in  the  i6th  and  of  the  French  in  the  i8th.  In  oth- 
er words,  the  German  writers  furnished  the  English 
with  ideas  and  ways  of  feeling  rather  than  with 
models  of  style.  Goethe  and  Schiller  did  not  be- 
come subjects  for  literary  imitation  as  Moliere, 
Racine,  and  Boileau  had  become  in  Pope's  time. 
It  was  reserved  for  a  later  generation  and  for 
Thomas  Carlyle  to  domesticate  the  diction  of  Ger- 
man prose.  But  the  nature  and  extent  of  this  influ- 
ence can,  perhaps,  best  be  noted  when  we  come  to 
take  up  the  authors  of  the  time  one  by  one. 

The  excitement  caused  by  the  French  Revolu- 
tion was  something  more  obvious  and  immediate. 
When  the  Bastile  fell,  in  1789,  the  enthusiasm  among 
the  friends  of  liberty  and  human  progress  in  En- 
gland was  hardly  less  intense  than  in  France.  It 
was  the  dawn  of  a  new  day :  the  shackles  were 
stricken  from  the  slave;  all  men  were  free  and  all 
men  were  brothers,  and  radical  young  England  sent 
up  a  shout  that  echoed  the  roar  of  the  Paris  mob. 
Wordsworth's  lines  on  the  Fall  of  the  Bastile,  Cole- 
ridge's Fall  of  Robespierre  and  Ode  to  France, 
and  Southey's  revolutionary  drama,  Wat  Tyler, 
gave  expression  to  the  hopes  and  aspirations  of  the 
English  democracy.  In  after  life  Wordsworth, 
looking  back  regretfully  to  those  years  of  promise, 


222  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

wrote  his  poem  on  the  French  Revolution  as  it  Ap 
peared  to  Enthusiasts  at  its  Commencement. 

"  Bliss  was  it  in  that  dawn  to  be  alive, 
But  to  be  young  was  very  heaven.     Oh  times 
In  which  the  meager,  stale,  forbidding  ways 
Of  custom,  law,  and  statute  took  at  once 
The  attraction  of  a  country  in  romance." 

Those  were  the  days  in  which  Wordsworth,  th^n 
an  under-graduate  at  Cambridge,  spent  a  college 
vacation  in  tramping  through  France,  landing  <?t 
Calais  on  the  eve  of  the  very  day  (July  14,  1790) 
on  which  Louis  XVI.  signalized  the  anniversary  of 
the  fall  of  the  Bastile  by  taking  the  oath  of  fidelity 
to  the  new  Constitution.  In  the  following  year 
Wordsworth  revisited  France,  where  he  spent  thir- 
teen months,  forming  an  intimacy  with  the  repub- 
lican general,  Beaupuis,  at  Orleans,  and  reaching 
Paris  not  long  after  the  September  massacres  of 
1792.  Those  were  the  days,  too,  in  which  young 
Southey  and  young  Coleridge,  having  married  sis- 
ters at  Bristol,  were  planning  a  "  Pantisocracy,"  or 
ideal  community,  on  the  banks  of  the  Susquehan- 
nah,  and  denouncing  the  British  government  for 
going  to  war  with  the  French  Republic.  This  group 
of  poets,  who  had  met  one  another  first  in  the  south 
of  England,  came  afterward  to  be  called  the  Lake 
Poets,  from  their  residence  in  the  mountainous  lake 
rountry  of  Westmoreland  and  Cumberland,  with 
which  their  names,  and  that  of  Wordsworth,  espe- 
cially, are  forever  associated.  The  so-called  "  Lak- 


FRENCH  REVOLUTION  TO  DEATH  OF  SCOTT.  223 

ers  "  did  not,  properly  speaking,  constitute  a  school 
of  poetry.  They  differed  greatly  from  one  another 
in  mind  and  art.  But  they  were  connected  by  so- 
cial ties  and  by  religious  and  political  sympathies. 
The  excesses  of  the  French  Revolution,  and  the 
usurpation  of  Napoleon  disappointed  them,  as  it 
did  many  other  English  liberals,  and  drove  them 
into  the  ranks  of  the  reactionaries.  Advancing 
years  brought  conservatism,  and  they  became  in 
time  loyal  Tories  and  orthodox  Churchmen. 

William  Wordsworth  (1770-1850),  the  chief  of  the 
three,  and,  perhaps,  on  the  whole,  the  greatest  En- 
glish poet  since  Milton,  published  his  Lyrical  Bal- 
lads in  1798.  The  volume  contained  a  few  pieces 
by  his  friend  Coleridge — among  them  the  Ancient 
Manner — and  its  appearance  may  fairly  be  said  to 
mark  an  epoch  in  the  history  of  English  poetry. 
Wordsworth  regarded  himself  as  a  reformer  of  po- 
etry ;  and  in  the  preface  to  the  second  volume 
of  Lyrical  Ballads,  he  defended  the  theory  on 
which  they  were  composed.  His  innovations  were 
twofold,  in  subject-matter  and  in  diction.  "The 
principal  object  which  I  proposed  to  myself  in 
these  poems,"  he  said,  "  was  to  choose  incidents 
and  situations  from  common  life.  Low  and  rustic 
life  was  generally  chosen,  because,  in  that  condi- 
tion, the  essential  passions  of  the  heart  find  a  bet- 
ter soil  in  which  they  can  attain  their  maturity  .  .  . 
and  are  incorporated  with  the  beautiful  and  per- 
manent forms  of  nature."  Wordsworth  discarded, 
in  theory,  the  poetic  diction  of  his  piedecessors, 


224  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

and  professed  to  use  "a  selection  of  the  real  lan- 
guage of  men  in  a  state  of  vivid  sensation."  He 
adopted,  he  said,  the  language  of  men  in  rustic 
life,  "  because  such  men  hourly  communicate  with 
the  best  objects  from  which  the  best  part  of  lan- 
guage is  originally  derived." 

In  the  matter  of  poetic  diction  Wordsworth  did 
not,  in  his  practice,  adhere  to  the  doctrine  of  this 
preface.  Many  of  his  most  admired  poems,  such 
as  the  Lines  written  near  Tintern  Abbey,  the  great 
Ode  on  the  Intimations  of  Immortality,  the  Sonnets, 
and  many  parts  of  his  longest  poems,  The  Excur- 
sion and  The  Prelude,  deal  with  philosophic  thought 
and  highly  intellectualized  emotions.  In  all  of 
these  and  in  many  others  the  language  is  rich, 
stately,  involved,  and  as  remote  from  the  "real 
language  "  of  Westmoreland  shepherds,  as  is  the 
epic  blank  verse  of  Milton.  On  the  other  hand,  in 
those  of  his  poems  which  were  consciously  written 
in  illustration  of  his  theory,  the  affectation  of  sim- 
plicity, coupled  with  a  defective  sense  of  humor, 
sometimes  led  him  to  the  selection  of  vulgar  and 
trivial  themes,  and  the  use  of  language  which  is 
bald,  childish,  or  even  ludicrous.  His  simplicity 
is  too  often  the  simplicity  of  Mother  Goose  rather 
than  of  Chaucer.  Instances  of  this  occur  in  such 
poems  as  Peter  Bell,  the  Idiot  Boy,  Goody  Blake 
and  Harry  Gill,  Simon  Lee,  and  the  Wagoner. 
But  there  are  multitudes  of  Wordsworth's  ballads 
and  lyrics  which  are  simple  without  being  silly, 
and  which,  in  their  homeliness  and  clear  pro- 


FRENCH  REVOLUTION  TO  DEATH  OF  SCOTT.  225 

fundity,  in  their  production  of  the  strongest  effects 
by  the  fewest  strokes,  are  among  the  choicest  modern 
examples  of  pure,  as  distinguished  from  decorated, 
art.  Such  are  (out  of  many)  Ruth,  Lucy,  A  Portrait^ 
To  a  Highland  Girl,  The  Reverie  of  Poor  Susan, 
To  the  Cuckoo,  The  Reaper,  We  Are  Seven,  The  Pet 
Lamb,  The  Fountain,  The  Two  April  Mornings,  The 
Leech  Gatherer,  The  Thorn,  and  Yarrcrju  Unvisited. 
Wordsworth  was  something  of  a  Quaker  in 
poetry,  and  loved  the  sober  drabs  and  grays  of 
life.  Quietism  was  his  literary  religion,  and  the 
sensational  was  to  him  not  merely  vulgar,  but 
almost  wicked.  "  The  human  mind,"  he  wrote,  "is 
capable  of  being  excited  without  the  application 
of  gross  and  violent  stimulants."  He  disliked  the 
far-fetched  themes  and  high-colored  style  of  Scott 
and  Byron.  He  once  told  Landor  that  all  of 
Scott's  poetry  together  was  not  worth  sixpence. 
From  action  and  passion  he  turned  away  to  sing 
the  inward  life  of  the  soul  and  the  outward  life  of 
Nature.  He  said: 

'  To  me  the  meanest  flower  that  blows  can  gire 
Thoughts  that  do  often  lie  too  deep  for  tears." 

And  again : 

"  Long  have  I  loved  what  I  behold, 
The  night  that  calms,  the  day  that  cheers  ; 
The  common  growth  of  mother  earth 
Suffices  me — her  tears,  her  mirth. 
Her  humblest  mirth  and  tears." 

Wordsworth's    life   was   outwardly    uneventful. 
The  companionship  of  the  mountains  and  of  his 
15 


226  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

own  thoughts  ;  the  sympathy  of  his  household  ; 
the  lives  of  the  dalesmen  and  cottagers  about 
him  furnished  him  with  all  the  stimulus  that  he 
required. 

"  Love  had  he  found  in  huts  where  poor  men  lie  : 
His  only  teachers  had  been  woods  and  rills, 

The  silence  that  is  in  the  starry  sky, 

The  sleep  that  is  among  the  lonely  hills." 

He  read  little,  but  reflected  much,  and  made  poetry 
daily,  composing,  by  preference,  out  of  doors,  and 
dictating  his  verses  to  some  member  of  his  family. 
His  favorite  amanuensis  was  his  sister  Dorothy, 
a  woman  of  fine  gifts,  to  whom  Wordsworth  was 
indebted  for  some  of  his  happiest  inspirations. 
She  was  the  subject  of  the  poem  beginning  "  Her 
eyes  are  wild,"  and  her  charming  Memorials  of  a 
Tour  in  the  Scottish  Highlands  records  the  origin 
of  many  of  her  brother's  best  poems.  Throughout 
life  Wordsworth  was  remarkably  self-centered. 
The  ridicule  of  the  reviewers,  against  which  he 
gradually  made  his  way  to  public  recognition, 
never  disturbed  his  serene  belief  in  himself,  or  in 
the  divine  message  which  he  felt  himself  com- 
missioned to  deliver.  He  was  a  slow  and  serious 
person,  a  preacher  as  well  as  a  poet,  with  a  cer- 
tain rigidity,  not  to  say  narrowness,  of  character. 
That  plastic  temperament  which  we  associate 
with  poetic  genius  Wordsworth  either  did  not 
possess,  or  it  hardened  early.  Whole  sides  of  life 
were  beyond  the  range  of  his  sympathies.  He 


FRENCH  REVOLUTION  TO  DEATH  OF  SCOTT.  227 

touched  life  at  fewer  points  than  Byron  and  Scott, 
but  touched  it  more  profoundly.  It  is  to  him  that 
we  owe  the  phrase  "plain  living  and  high  think- 
ing," as  also  a  most  noble  illustration  of  it  in  his 
own  practice.  His  was  the  wisest  and  deepest 
spirit  among  the  English  poets  of  his  generation, 
though  hardly  the  most  poetic.  He  wrote  too 
much,  and,  attempting  to  make  every  petty  inci- 
dent or  reflection  the  occasion  of  a  poem,  he 
finally  reached  the  point  of  composing  verses 
On  Seeing  a  Harp  in  the  shape  of  a  Needle  Case, 
and  on  other  themes  more  worthy  of  Mrs.  Sigour- 
ney.  In  parts  of  his  long  blank-verse  poems,  The 
Excursion,  1814,  and  The  Prelude  —  which  was 
printed  after  his  death  in  1850,  though  finished  as 
early  as  1806 — the  poetry  wears  very  thin. and  its 
place  is  taken  by  prosaic,  tedious  didacticism. 
These  two  poems  were  designed  as  portions  of  a 
still  more  extended  work,  The.  Recluse,  which  was 
never  completed.  The  Excursion  consists  mainly 
of  philosophical  discussions  on  nature  and  human 
life  between  a  school-master,  a  solitary,  and  an 
itinerant  peddler.  The  Prelude  describes  the  de- 
velopment of  Wordsworth's  own  genius.  In  parts 
of  The  Excursion  the  diction  is  fairly  Shaksperian. 

"  The  good  die  first. 

And  they  whose  hearts  are  dry  as  summer  dust 
Burn  to  the  socket." 

A  passage  not  only  beautiful  in  itself,  but  dramat- 
ically true,  in  the  mouth  of  the  bereaved  mother 


228  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

who  utters  it,  to  that  human  instinct  which  gen- 
eralizes a  private  sorrow  into  a*  universal  law. 
Much  of  TJie  Prelude  can  hardly  be  called  poetry 
at  all,  yet  some  of  Wordsworth's  loftiest  poetry  is 
buried  among  its  dreary  wastes,  and  now  and  then, 
in  the  midst  of  commonplaces,  comes  a  flash  of 
Miltonic  splendor — like 

"  Golden  cities  ten  months'  journey  deep 
Among  Tartarian  wilds." 

Wordsworth  is,  above  all  things,  the  poet  of  Nat- 
ure. In  this  province  he  was  not  without  fore- 
runners. To  say  nothing  of  Burns  and  Cowper, 
there  was  George  Crabbe,  who  had  published  his 
Village  in  1 783  — fifteen  years  before  the  Lyrical  Bal- 
lads — and  whose  last  poem,  Tales  of  the  Hall,  came 
out  in  1819,  five  years  after  The  Excursion.  Byron 
called  Crabbe  ''  Nature's  sternest  painter,  and  her 
best."  He  was  a  minutely  accurate  delineator  of  the 
harsher  aspects  of  rural  life.  He  photographs  a 
Gypsy  camp;  a  common,  with  its  geese  and  don- 
key; a  salt  marsh,  a  shabby  village  street,  or  tumble- 
down manse.  But  neither  Crabbe  nor  Cowper 
has  the  imaginative  lift  of  Wordsworth, 

"  The  light  that  never  was  on  sea  or  land 
The  consecration  and  the  poet's  dream." 

In  a  note  on  a  couplet  in  one  of  his  earliest 
poems,  descriptive  of  an  oak  tree  standing  dark 
against  the  sunset,  Wordsworth  says:  "  I  recollect 
distinctly  the  very  spot  where  this  struck  me. 


FRENCH  REVOLUTION  TO  DEATH  OF  SCOTT.  229 

The  moment  was  important  in  my  poetical  history, 
for  I  date  from  it  my  consciousness  of  the  infinite 
variety  of  natural  appearances  which  had  been  un- 
noticed by  the  poets  of  any  age  or  country,  and  I 
made  a  resolution  to  supply,  in  some  degree,  the 
deficiency."  In  later  life  he  is  said  to  have  been 
impatient  of  any  thing  spoken  or  written  by  an- 
other about  mountains,  conceiving  himself  to  have 
a  monopoly  of  "  the  power  of  hills."  Rut  Words- 
worth did  not  stop  with  natural  description. 
Matthew  Arnold  has  said  that  the  office  of  modern 
poetry  is  the  "moral  interpretation  of  Nature." 
Such,  at  any  rate,  was  Wordsworth's  office.  To 
him  Nature  wm  alive  and  divine.  He  felt,  un- 
der the  veil  of  phenomena, 

"  A  presence  that  disturbs  me  with  the  joy 
Of  elevated  thought :  a  sense  sublime 
Of  something  far  more  deeply  interfused." 

He  approached,  if  he  did  not  actually  reach,  the 
view  of  Pantheism,  which  identifies  God  with  Nat- 
ure; and  the  mysticism  of  the  Idealists,  who 
identify  Nature  with  the  soul  of  man.  This  tend- 
ency was  not  inspired  in  Wordsworth  by  German 
philosophy.  He  was  no  metaphysician.  In  his 
rambles  with  Coleridge  about  Nether  Stowey  and 
Alfoxden,  when  both  were  young,  they  had,  indeed, 
discussed  Spinoza.  And  in  the  autumn  of  1798, 
after  the  publication  of  the  Lyrical  Ballads,  the 
two  friends  went  together  to  Germany,  where 
Wordsworth  spent  half  a  year.  But  the  literature 


230  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

and  philosophy  of  Germany  made  little  direct  im- 
pression upon  Wordsworth.  He  disliked  Goethe, 
and  he  quoted  with  approval  the  saying  of  the 
poet  Klopstock,  whom  he  met  at  Hamburg,  that 
he  placed  the  romanticist  Burger  above  both 
Goethe  and  Schiller. 

It  was  through  Samuel  Taylor  Coleridge  (1772- 
1834),  who  was  pre-eminently  the  thinker  among 
the  literary  men  of  his  generation,  that  the  new 
German  thought  found  its  way  into  England.  Dur- 
ing the  fourteen  months  which  he  spent  in  Ger- 
many— chiefly  at  Ratzburg  and  Gottingen — he  had 
familiarized  himself  with  the  transcendental  phi- 
losophy of  Immanuel  Kant  and  of  his  continuators, 
Fichte  and  Schelling,  as  well  as  with  the  general 
literature  of  Germany.  On  his  return  to  England, 
he  published,  in  1800,  a  free  translation  of  Schil- 
ler's Wallenstein,  and  through  his  writings,  and  more 
especially  through  his  conversations,  he  became  the 
conductor  by  which  German  philosophic  ideas 
reached  the  English  literary  class. 

Coleridge  described  himself  as  being  from  boy- 
hood a  book-worm  and  a  day-dreamer.  He  re- 
mained through  life  an  omnivorous,  though  unsys- 
tematic, reader.  He  was  helpless  in  practical 
affairs,  and  his  native  indolence  and  procrastina- 
tion were  increased  by  his  indulgence  in  the  opium 
habit.  On  his  return  to  England,  in  1800,  he  went 
to  reside  at  Keswick,  in  the  Lake  Country,  with 
his  brother-in-law,  Southey,  whose  industry  sup- 
ported both  families.  During  his  last  nineteen 


FRENCH  REVOLUTION  TO  DEATH  OF  SCOTT.  231 

years  Coleridge  found  an  asylum  under  the  roof 
of  Mr.  James  Oilman,  of  Highgate,  near  London, 
whither  many  of  the  best  young  men  in  England 
were  accustomed  to  resort  to  listen  to  Coleridge's 
wonderful  talk.  Talk,  indeed,  was  the  medium 
through  which  he  mainly  influenced  his  genera- 
tion. It  cost  him  an  effort  to  put  his  thoughts  on 
paper.  His  Table  Talk — crowded  with  pregnant 
paragraphs — was  taken  down  from  his  lips  by  his 
nephew,  Henry  Coleridge.  His  criticisms  of  Shaks- 
pere  are  nothing  but  notes,  made  here  and  there, 
from  a  course  of  lectures  delivered  before  the 
Royal  Institute,  and  never  fully  written  out.  Though 
only  hints  and  suggestions,  they  are,  perhaps,  the 
most  penetrative  and  helpful  Shaksperian  criticism 
in  English.  He  was  always  forming  projects  and 
abandoning  them.  He  projected  a  great  work  on 
Christian  philosophy,  which  was  to  have  been  his 
magnum  opus,  but  he  never  wrote  it.  He  projected 
an  epic  poem  on  the  fall  of  Jerusalem.  "  I  schemed 
it  at  twenty-five,"  he  said,  "  but,  alas!  venturum  ex- 
pcctat."  What  bade  fair  to  be  his  best  poem,  Chris- 
tabel,  is  a  fragment.  Another  strangely  beautiful 
poem,  Kubla  Khan — which  came  to  him,  he  said, 
in  sleep — is  even  more  fragmentary.  And  the  most 
important  of  his  prose  remains,  his  Biographia 
Literaria,  1817,  a  history  of  his  own  opinions, 
breaks  off  abruptly. 

It  was  in  his  suggestiveness  that  Coleridge's 
great  service  to  posterity  resided.  He  was  what 
J.  S.  Mill  called  a  "  seminal  mind,"  and  his  thought 


232  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

had  that  power  of  stimulating  thought  in  others, 
which  is  the  mark  and  the  privilege  of  original 
genius.  Many  a  man  has  owed  to  some  sentence 
of  Coleridge's,  if  not  the  awakening  in  himself  of 
a  new  intellectual  life,  at  least  the  starting  of  fruit- 
ful trains  of  reflection  which  have  modified  his 
whole  view  of  certain  great  subjects.  On  every 
thing  that  he  left  is  set  the  stamp  of  high  mental 
authority.  He  was  not,  perhaps,  primarily,  he  cer- 
tainly was  not  exclusively,  a  poet.  In  theology,  in 
philosophy,  in  political  thought,  and  literary  criti- 
cism, he  set  currents  flowing  which  are  flowing  yet. 
The  terminology  of  criticism,  for  example,  is  in  his 
debt  for  many  of  those  convenient  distinctions — 
such  as  that  between  genius  and  talent,  between 
wit  and  humor,  between  fancy  and  imagination — 
which  are  familiar  enough  now,  but  which  he  first 
introduced,  or  enforced.  His  definitions  and 
apothegms  we  meet  every-where.  Such  are,  for  ex- 
ample, the  sayings:  "  Every  man  is  born  an  Aris- 
totelian or  a  Platonist."  "Prose  is  words  in  their 
best  order;  poetry,  the  best  words  in  the  best 
order."  And  among  the  bits  of  subtle  interpreta- 
tion, that  abound  in  his  writings,  may  be  mentioned 
his  estimate  of  Wordsworth,  in  the  Biographia 
Littraria,  and  his  sketch  of  Hamlet's  character — 
one  with  which  he  was  personally  in  strong  sympa- 
thy— in  the  Lectures  on  Shakspere. 

The  Broad-Church  party,  in  the  English  Church, 
among  whose  most  eminent  exponents  have  been 
Frederic  Robertson,  Arnold  of  Rugby,  F.  D. 


FRENCH  REVOLUTION  TO  DEATH  OF  SCOTT.  233 

Maurice,  Charles  Kingsley,  and  the  late  Dean 
Stanley,  traces  its  intellectual  origin  to  Cole- 
ridge's Aids  to  Reflection ;  to  his  writings  and 
conversations  in  general,  and  particularly  to  his 
ideal  of  a  national  Clerisy,  as  set  forth  in  his 
essay  on  Church  and  State.  In  politics,  as  in  re- 
ligion, Coleridge's  conservatism  represents  the  re- 
action against  the  destructive  spirit  of  the  eight- 
eenth century  and  the  French  revolution.  To 
this  root-and-branch  democracy  he  opposed  the 
view,  that  every  old  belief,  or  institution,  such  as 
the  throne  or  the  Church,  had  served  some  need, 
and  had  a  rational  idea  at  the  bottom  of  it,  to 
which  it  might  be  again  recalled,  and  made  once 
more  a  benefit  to  society,  instead  of  a  curse  and  an 
anachronism. 

As  a  poet,  Coleridge  has  a  sure,  though  slender, 
hold  upon  immortal  fame.  No  English  poet  has 
"  sung  so  wildly  well  "  as  the  singer  of  Christabel  and 
the  Ancient  Mariner.  The  former  of  these  is,  inform, 
a  romance  in  a  variety  of  meters,  and  in  substance, 
a  tale  of  supernatural  possession,  by  which  a  lovely 
and  innocent  maiden  is  brought  under  the  control 
of  a  witch.  Though  unfinished  and  obscure  in  in- 
tention, it  haunts  the  imagination  with  a  mystic 
power.  Byron  had  seen  Christabel  in  MS.,  and 
urged  Coleridge  to  publish  it.  He  hated  all  the 
"  Lakers,"  but  when,  on  parting  from  Lady  Byron, 
he  wrote  his  song, 

"  Fare  thee  well,  and  if  forever, 
Still  forever  fare  thee  well," 


234  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

he  prefixed  to  it  the  noble  lines  from  Coleridge's 
poem,  beginning 

"  Alas  !  they  had  been  friends  in  youth." 

In  that  weird  ballad,  the  Ancient  Mariner,  the 
supernatural  is  handled  with  even  greater  subtlety 
than  in  Christabel.  The  reader  is  led  to  feel  that 
amid  the  loneliness  of  the  tropic  sea,  the  line  be- 
tween the  earthly  and  the  unearthly  vanishes,  and 
the  poet  leaves  him  to  discover  for  himself  whether 
the  spectral  shapes  that  the  mariner  saw  were 
merely  the  visions  of  the  calenture,  or  a  glimpse  of 
the  world  of  spirits.  Coleridge  is  one  of  our  most 
perfect  metrists.  The  poet  Swinburne — than  whom 
there  can  be  no  higher  authority  on  this  point 
(though  he  is  rather  given  to  exaggeration) — pro- 
nounces Kubla  Khan,  "for  absolute  melody  and 
splendor,  the  first  poem  in  the  language." 

Robert  Southey,  the  third  member  of  this  group, 
was  a  diligent  worker  and  one  of  the  most  volumi- 
nous of  English  writers.  As  a  poet,  he  was  lacking 
in  inspiration,  and  his  big  Oriental  epics,  Thalaba, 
1 80 r,  and  the  Curse  of  Kehama,  1810,  are  little 
better  than  wax-work.  Of  his  numerous  works  in 
prose,  the  Life  of  Nelson  is,  perhaps,  the  best,  and 
is  an  excellent  biography. 

Several  other  authors  were  more  or  less  closely 
associated  with  the  Lake  Poets  by  residence  or 
social  affiliation.  John  Wilson,  the  editor  of  Black- 
wooa's,  lived  for  some  time,  when  a  young  man,  at 
Elleray,  on  the  banks  of  Windermere.  He  was  an 


FRENCH  REVOLUTION  TO  DEATH  OF  SCOTT  235 

athletic  man  of  out-door  habits,  an  enthusiastic 
sportsman,  and  a  lover  of  natural  scenery.  His 
admiration  of  Wordsworth  was  thought  to  have  led 
him  to  imitation  of  the  latter,  in  his  Isle  of  Palms, 
1812,  and  his  other  poetry. 

One  of  Wilson's  companions,  in  his  mountain 
walks,  was  Thomas  De  Quincey,  who  had  been  led 
by  his  reverence  for  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge  to 
take  up  his  residence,  in  1808,  at  Grasmere,  where 
he  occupied  for  many  years  the  cottage  from  which 
Wordsworth  had  removed  to  Allan  Bank.  De 
Quincey  was  a  shy,  bookish  little  man,  of  erratic, 
nocturnal  habits,  who  impresses  one,  personally, 
as,  a  child  of  genius,  with  a  child's  helplessness 
and  a  child's  sharp  observation.  He  was,  above 
all  things,  a  magazinist.  All  his  writings,  with  one 
exception,  appeared  first  in  the  shape  of  contribu- 
tions to  periodicals ;  and  his  essays,  literary  criti- 
cisms, and  miscellaneous  papers  are  exceedingly 
rich  and  varied.  The  most  famous  of  them  was 
his  Confessions  of  an  English  Opium  Eater,  pub- 
lished as  a  serial  in  the  London  Magazine,  in  1821. 
He  had  begun  to  take  opium,  as  a  cure  for  the 
toothache,  when  a  student  at  Oxford,  where  he  re- 
sided from  1803  to  1808.  By  1816  he  had  risen  to 
eight  thousand  drops  of  laudanum  a  day.  For  sev- 
eral years  after  this  he  experienced  the  acutest 
misery,  and  his  will  suffered  an  entire  paralysis. 
In  1821  he  succeeded  in  reducing  his  dose  to  a 
comparatively  small  allowance,  and  in  shaking  off 
his  torpor  so  as  to  become  capable  of  literary  work. 


236  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

The  most  impressive  effect  of  the  opium  habit  was 
seen  in  his  dreams,  in  the  unnatural  expansion  of 
space  and  time,  and  the  infinite  repetition  of  the 
same  objects.  His  sleep  was  filled  with  dim,  vast 
images  ;  measureless  cavalcades  deploying  to  the 
sound  of  orchestral  music ;  an  endless  succession 
of  vaulted  halls,  with  staircases  climbing  to  heaven, 
up  which  toiled  eternally  the  same  solitary  figure. 
"Then  came  sudden  alarms,  hurrying  to  and  fro; 
trepidations  of  innumerable  fugitives ;  darkness  and 
light;  tempest  and  human  faces."  Many  of  DeQuin- 
cey's  papers  were  autobiographical,  but  there  is  al- 
ways something  baffling  in  these  reminiscences.  In 
the  interminable  wanderings  of  his  pen — for  which, 
perhaps,  opium  was  responsible — he  appears  to  lose 
all  trace  of  facts  or  of  any  continuous  story.  Ev- 
ery actual  experience  of  his  life  seems  to  have  been 
taken  up  into  a  realm  of  dream,  and  there  distorted 
till  the  reader  sees  not  the  real  figures,  but  the  enor- 
mous, grotesque  shadows  of  them,  executing  wild 
dances  on  a  screen.  An  instance  of  this  process 
is  described  by  himself  in  his  Vision  of  Sudden 
Death.  But  his  unworldliness  and  faculty  of  vision- 
seeing  were  not  inconsistent  with  the  keenness  of 
judgment  and  the  justness  and  delicacy  of  percep- 
tion displayed  in  his  Biographical  Sketches  of  Words- 
worth, Coleridge,  and  other  contemporaries:  in  his 
critical  papers  on  Pope,  Milton,  Lessing,  Homer  and 
the  Homeridcz:  his  essay  on  Style  ;  and  his  Brief  Ap- 
praisal of  the  Greek  Literature.  His  curious  schol- 
arship is  seen  in  his  articles  on  the  Toilet  of  a  He- 


FRENCH  REVOLUTION  TO  DEATH  OF  SCOTT.  237 

breu>  Lady,  and  the  Casuistry  of  Roman  Meals  ;  his 
ironical  and  somewhat  elaborate  humor  in  his  essay 
on  Murder  Considered  as  One  of  the  Fine  Arts.  Of 
his  narrative  pieces  the  most  remarkable  is  his  Re- 
volt of  the  Tartars,  describing  the  flight  of  a  Kal- 
muck tribe  of  six  hundred  thousand  souls  from 
Russia  to  the  Chinese  frontier :  a  great  hegira  or 
anabasis,  which  extended  for  four  thousand  miles 
over  desert  steppes  infested  with  foes;  occupied  six 
months'  time,  and  left  nearly  half  of  the  tribe  dead 
upon  the  way.  The  subject  was  suited  to  De  Quin- 
cey's  imagination.  It  was  like  one  of  his  own  opi- 
um visions,  and  he  handled  it  with  a  dignity  and 
force  which  make  the  history  not  altogether  unwor- 
thy of  comparison  with  Thucydides's  great  chapter 
on  the  Sicilian  Expedition. 

An  intimate  frit-nd  of  Southey  was  Walter  Sav- 
age Landor,  a  man  of  kingly  nature,  of  a  leonine 
presence,  with  a  most  stormy  and  unreasonable 
temper,  and  yet  with  the  courtliest  graces  of  man- 
ner and  with — said  Emerson — a  "  wonderful  brain, 
despotic,  violent,  and  inexhaustible."  He  inherit- 
ed wealth,  and  lived  a  great  part  of  his  life  at  Flor- 
ence, where  he  died,  in  1864,  in  his  ninetieth  year. 
Dickens,  who  knew  him  at  Bath,  in  the  latter  part 
of  his  life,  made  a  kindly  caricature  of  him  as  Law- 
rence Boythom,  in  Bleak  House,  whose  "combina- 
tion of  superficial  ferocity  and  inherent  tenderness," 
testifies  Henry  Crabb  Robinson,  in  his  Diary,  was 
true  to  the  life.  Landor  is  the  most  purely  clas- 
sical of  English  writers.  Not  merely  his  themes 


238  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

but  his  whole  way  of  thinking  was  pagan  and  an- 
tique. He  composed,  indifferently,  in  English  or 
Latin,  preferring  the  latter,  if  any  thing,  in  obedi- 
ence to  his  instinct  for  compression  and  exclusive- 
ness.  Thus  portions  of  his  narrative  poem,  Gcbir, 
1798,  were  written  originally  in  Latin,  and  he  added 
a  Latin  version,  Gelririus,  to  the  English  edition. 
In  like  manner  his  Hellenics,  1847,  were  mainly 
translations  from  his  Latin  Idyllia  fferoica,  written 
years  before.  The  Hellenic  clearness  and  repose 
which  were  absent  from  his  life,  Landor  sought  in  his 
art.  His  poems,  in  their  restraint,  their  objectivity, 
their  aloofness  from  modern  feeling,  have  something 
chill  and  artificial.  The  verse  of  poets  like  Byron 
and  Wordsworth  is  alive  ;  the  blood  runs  in  it.  But 
Landor's  polished,  clean-cut  intaglios  have  been 
well  described  as  "written  in  marble."  He  was 
a  master  of  fine  and  solid  prose.  His  Pericles 
and  Aspasia  consists  of  a  series  of  letters  passing 
between  the  great  Athenian  demagogue,  the  hetaira, 
Aspasia,  her  friend,  Cleone  of  Miletus.  Anaxagorus, 
the  philosopher,  and  Pericles's  nephew,  Alcibiades. 
In  this  masterpiece  the  intellectual  life  of  Athens, 
at  its  period  of  highest  refinement,  is  brought  before 
the  reader  with  singular  vividness,  and  he  is  made 
to  breathe  an  atmosphere  of  high-bred  grace,  deli- 
cate wit,  and  thoughtful  sentiment,  expressed  in 
English  "of  Attic  choice."  The  Imaginary  Con- 
versations^ 1824-1846,  were  Platonic  dialogues  be- 
tween a  great  variety  of  historical  characters  ;  be- 
tween, for  example,  Dante  and  Beatrice,  Washing- 


FRENCH  REVOLUTION  TO  DEATH  OF  SCOTT.  239 

ton  and  Franklin,  Queen  Elisabeth  and  Cecil, 
Xenophon  and  Cyrus  the  Younger,  Bonaparte  and 
the  President  of  the  Senate.  Lander's  writings 
have  never  been  popular ;  they  address  an  aristoc- 
racy of  scholars;  and  Byron — whom  Landor  dis- 
liked and  considered  vulgar  —  sneered  at  the 
latter  as  a  writer  who  "  cultivated  much  private 
renown  in  the  shape  of  Latin  verses."  He  said  of 
himself  that  he  "never  contended  with  a  contem- 
porary, but  walked  alone  on  the  far  eastern  up- 
lands, meditating  and  remembering." 

A  schoolmate  of  Coleridge,  at  Christ's  Hospital, 
and  his  friend  and  correspondent  through  life,  was 
Charles  Lamb,  one  of  the  most  charming  of  En- 
glish essayists.  He  was  an  old  bachelor,  who  lived 
alone  with  his  sister  Mary  a  lovable  and  intellect- 
ual woman,  but  subject  to  recurring  attacks  of  mad- 
ness. Lamb  was  "  a  notched  and  cropped  scriv- 
ener, a  votary  of  the  desk,"  a  clerk,  that  is,  in  the 
employ  of  the  East  India  Company.  He  was  of 
antiquarian  tastes,  an  ardent  play-goer,  a  lover  of 
whist  and  of  the  London  streets;  and  these  tastes 
are  reflected  in  his  Essays  of  Elia,  contributed  to 
the  London  Magazine  and  reprinted  in  book  form 
in  1823.  From  his  mousing  among  the  Elisabeth- 
an  dramatists  and  such  old  humorists  as  Burton 
and  Fuller,  his  own  style  imbibed  a  peculiar  quaint- 
ness  and  pungency.  His  Specimens  of  English 
Dramatic  Poets,  1808,  is  admirable  for  its  critical 
insight.  In  1802  he  paid  a  visit  to  Coleridge  at 
Keswick,  in  the  Lake  Country ;  but  he  felt  or  af- 


240  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

fected  a  whimsical  horror  of  the  mountains,  and 
said,  "  Fleet  Street  and  the  Strand  are  better  places 
to  live  in."  Among  the  best  of  his  essays  are 
Dream  Children,  Poor  Relations,  The  Artificial  Com- 
edy of  the  Last  Century,  Old  China,  Roast  Pig,  A 
Defense  of  Chimney-sweeps,  A  Complaint  of  the  De- 
cay of  Beggars  in  the  Metropolis,  and  The  Old 
£enchers  of  the  Inner  Temple. 

The  romantic  movement,  preluded  by  Gray, 
Collins,  Chatterton,  Macpherson,  and  others,  cul- 
minated in  Walter  Scott  (1771-1832).  His  passion 
for  the  medieval  was  first  excited  by  reading  Per- 
cy's Reliques,  when  he  was  a  boy  ;  and  in  one  of 
his  school  themes  he  maintained  that  Ariosto  was 
a  greater  "poet  than  Homer.  He  began  early  to 
collect  manuscript  ballads,  suits  of  armor,  pieces  of 
old  plate,  border-horns,  and  similar  relics.  He 
learned  Italian  in  order  to  read  the  romancers — 
Ariosto,  Tasso,  Pulci,  and  Boiardo,  preferring  them 
to  Dante.  He  studied  Gothic  architecture,  her- 
aldry, and  the  art  of  fortification,  and  made  draw- 
ings of  famous  ruins  and  battle-fields.  In  particu- 
lar he  read  eagerly  every  thing  that  he  could  lay 
hands  on  relating  to  the  history,  legends,  and  an- 
tiquities of  the  Scottish  border — the  vale  of  Tweed, 
Teviotdale,  Ettrick  Forest,  and  the  Yarrow,  of  all 
which  land  he  became  the  laureate,  as  Burns  had 
been  of  Ayrshire  and  the  "West  Country."  Scott, 
like  Wordsworth,  was  an  out-door  poet.  He  spent 
much  time  in  the  saddle,  and  was  fond  of  horses, 
dogs,  hunting,  and  salmon-fishing.  He  had  a  keen 


FRENCH  REVOLUTION  TO  DEATH  OF  SCOTT.  241 

eye  for  the  beauties  of  natural  scenery,  though 
"  more  especially,"  he  admits, "  when  combined  with 
ancient  ruins  or  remains  of  our  forefathers'  piety  or 
splendor."  He  had  the  historic  imagination,  and, 
in  creating  the  historical  novel,  he  was  the  first  to 
throw  a  poetic  glamour  over  European  annals.  In 
1803  Wordsworth  visited  Scott  at  Lasswade,  near 
Edinburgh  ;  and  Scott  afterward  returned  the  vis- 
it at  Grasmere.  Wordsworth  noted  that  his  guest 
was  "full  of  anecdote  and  averse  from  disquisi- 
tion." The  Englishman  was  a  moralist  and  much 
given  to  "disquisition,"  while  the  Scotchman  was, 
above  all  things,  a  raconteur,  and,  perhaps,  on  the 
whole,  the  foremost  of  British  story-tellers.  Scott's 
Toryism,  too,  was  of  a  different  stripe  from  Words- 
worth's, being  rather  the  result  of  sentiment  and 
imagination  than  of  philosophy  and  reflection.  His 
mind  struck  deep  root  in  the  past ;  his  local  at- 
tachments and  family  pride  were  intense.  Abbots- 
ford  was  his  darling,  and  the  expenses  of  this  do- 
main and  of  the  baronial  hospitality  which  he  there 
extended  to  all  comers  were  among  the  causes  of 
his  bankruptcy.  The  enormous  toil  which  he  ex- 
acted of  himself,  to  pay  off  the  debt  of  ^117,000, 
contracted  by  the  failure  of  his  publishers,  cost 
him  his  life.  It  is  said  that  he  was  more  grat- 
ified when  the  Prince  Regent  created  him  a  bar- 
onet, in  1820,  than  by  all  the  public  recognition 
that  he  acquired  as  the  author  of  the  Waverley 
Novels. 

Scott  was  attracted  by  the  romantic  side  of  Ger- 
16 


242  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

man  literature.  His  first  published  poem  was  a 
translation  made  in  1796  from  Burger's  wild  bal- 
lad, Leonora.  He  followed  this  up  with  versions 
of  the  same  poet's  Wilde  Jager,  of  Goethe's  vio- 
lent drama  of  feudal  life,  Go'tz  Von  Berlichinge n,  and 
with  other  translations  from  the  German,  of  a 
similar  class.  On  his  horseback  trips  through  the 
border,  where  he  studied  the  primitive  manners  of 
the  Liddesdale  people,  and  took  down  old  ballads 
from  the  recitation  of  ancient  dames  and  cottagers, 
he  amassed  the  materials  for  his  Minstrelsy  of  the 
Scottish  Border,  1802.  But  the  first  of  his  original 
poems  was  the  Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel,  published 
in  1805,  and  followed,  in  quick  succession,  by 
Marmion,  the  Lady  of  the  Lake,  Rokeby,  the  Lord 
of  the  Isles,  and  a  volume  of  ballads  and  lyrical 
pieces,  all  issued  during  the  years  1806-1814.  The 
popularity  won  by  this  series  of  metrical  romances 
was  immediate  and  wide-spread.  Nothing  so  fresh, 
or  so  brilliant,  had  appeared  in  English  poetry  for 
nearly  two  centuries.  The  reader  was  hurried 
along  through  scenes  of  rapid  action,  whose  effect 
was  heightened  by  wild  landscapes  and  pictur- 
esque manners.  The  pleasure  was  a  passive  one. 
There  was  no  deep  thinking  to  perplex,  no  subtler 
beauties  to  pause  upon;  the  feelings  were  stirred 
pleasantly,  but  not  deeply;  the  effect  was  on  the 
surface.  The  spell  employed  Avas  novelty — or,  at 
most,  wonder — and  the  chief  emotion  aroused  was 
breathless  interest  in  the  progress  of  the  story. 
Carlyle  said  that  Scott's  genius  was  in  extciiso. 


FRENCH  REVOLUTION  TO  DEATH  OF  SCOTT.    243 

rather  than  /';;  intenso,  and  that  its  great  praise  was 
its  healthiness.  This  is  true  of  his  verse,  but  not 
altogether  so  of  his  prose,  which  exhibits  deeper 
qualities.  Some  of  Scott's  most  perfect  poems, 
too,  are  his  shorter  ballads,  like  Jock  <?'  Hazeldean, 
and  Proud  Maisie  is  in  the  Wood,  which  have  a 
greater  intensity  and  compression  than  his  met- 
rical tales. 

From  1814  to  1831  Scott  wrote  and  published 
the  Waverley  novels,  some  thirty  in  number;  if  we 
consider  the  amount  of  work  done,  the  speed  with 
which  it  was  done,  and  the  general  average  of  ex- 
cellence maintained,  perhaps  the  most  marvelous 
literary  feat  on  record.  The  series  was  issued 
anonymously,  and  takes  its  name  from  the  first 
number,  Waverley,  OK  'Tis  Sixty  Years  Since.  This 
was  founded  upon  the  rising  of  the  clans,  in  1745, 
in  support  of  the  Young  Pretender,  Charles  Edward 
Stuart,  and  it  revealed  to  the  English  public  that 
almost  foreign  country  which  lay  just  across  their 
threshold,  the  Scottish  Highlands.  The  Waverley 
novels  remain,  as  a  whole,  unequaled  as  historical 
fiction,  although,  here  and  there  a  single  novel, 
like  George  Eliot's  Romola,  or  Thackeray's  Henry 
Esmond,  or  Kingsley's  Hypatia,  may  have  attained 
a  place  beside  the  best  of  them.  They  were  a 
novelty  when  they  appeared.  English  prose  fiction 
had  somewhat  declined  since  the  time  of  Fielding 
and  Goldsmith.  There  were  truthful,  though 
rather  tame,  delineations  of  provincial  life,  like 
Jane  Austen's  Sense  and  Sensibility,  1811,  and 


244  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

Pride  and  Prejudice,  1813;  or  Maria  Edgeworth's 
Popular  Tales,  1804.  On  the  other  hand,  there 
were  Gothic  romances,  like  the  Monk  of  Matthew 
Gregory  Lewis,  to  whose  Tales  of  Wonder  some  of 
Scott's  translations  from  the  German  had  been 
contributed;  or  like  Anne  Radcliffe's  Mysteries  of 
Udolpho.  The  great  original  of  this  school  of  fic- 
tion was  Horace  Walpole's  Castle  of  Olranto,  1765, 
an  absurd  tale  of  secret  trap-doors,  subterranean 
vaults,  apparitions  of  monstrous  mailed  figures  and 
colossal  helmets,  pictures  that  descend  from  their 
frames,  and  hollow  voices  that  proclaim  the  ruin  of 
ancient  families. 

Scott  used  the  machinery  of  romance,  but  he  was 
not  merely  a  romancer,  or  a  historical  novelist 
even,  and  it  is  not,  as  Carlyle  implies,  the  buff-belts 
and  jerkins  which  principally  interest  us  in  his 
heroes.  Ivanhoe  and  Kenilworth  and  the  Talis- 
man are,  indeed,  romances  pure  and  simple,  and 
very  good  romances  at  that.  But,  in  novels  such 
as  Rob  Roy,  the  Antiquary,  the  Heart  of  Midlothian, 
and  the  Bride  of  Lammermoor,  Scott  drew  from 
contemporary  life,  and  from  his  intimate  knowl- 
edge of  Scotch  character.  The  story  is  there,  with 
its  entanglement  of  plot  and  its  exciting  advent- 
ures, but  there  are  also,  as  truly  as  in  Shakspere, 
though  not  in  the  same  degree,  the  observation  of 
life,  the  knowledge  of  men,  the  power  of  dramatic, 
creation.  No  writer  awakens  in  his  readers  a 
warmer  personal  affection  than  Walter  Scott,  the 
brave,  honest,  kindly  gentleman,  the  noblest 


FRENCH  REVOLUTION  TO  DEATH  OF  SCOTT.    245 

figure  among  the  literary  men  of  his  genera- 
tion. 

Another  Scotch  poet  was  Thomas  Campbell, 
whose  Pleasures  of  Hope,  1799,  was  written  in 
Pope's  couplet,  and  in  the  stilted  diction  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  Gertrude  of  Wyoming,  1809, 
a  long  narrative  poem  in  Spenserian  stanza,  is 
untrue  to  the  scenery  and  life  of  Pennsylvania, 
where  its  scene  is  laid.  But  Campbell  turned 
his  rhetorical  manner  and  his  clanking,  martial 
verse  to  fine  advantage  in  such  pieces  as  Hohen- 
linden,  Ye  Mariners  of  England,  and  the  Battle 
of  the  Baltic.  These  have  the  true  lyric  fire,  and 
rank  among  the  best  English  war-songs. 

When  Scott  was  asked  why  he  had  left  off  writ- 
ing poetry,  he  answered,  "  Byron  bet  me."  George 
Gordon  Byron  (1788-1824)  was  a  young  man  of 
twenty-four,  when,  on  his  return  from  a  two  years' 
sauntering  through  Portugal,  Spain,  Albania, 
Greece,  and  the  Levant,  he  published,  in  the  first 
two  cantos  of  Childe  Harold,  1812,  a  sort  of  poetic 
itinerary  of  his  experiences  and  impressions.  The 
poem  took,  rather  to  its  author's  surprise,  who  said 
that  he  woke  one  morning  and  found  himself 
famous.  Childe  Harold  opened  a  ne\x  field  to 
poetry,  the  romance  of  travel,  the  picturesque 
aspects  of  foreign  scenery,  manners,  and  costumes. 
It  is  instructive  of  the  difference  between  the  two 
ages,  in  poetic  sensibility  to  such  things,  to  com° 
pare  Byron's  glowing  imagery  with  Addison's  tame 
Letter  from  Italy,  written  a  century  before.  Childe 


246  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

Harold  was  followed  by  a  series  of  metrical  tales, 
the  Giaour,  the  Bride  of  Abydos,  the  Corsair,  Lara, 
the  Siege  of  Corinth,  Parasina,  and  the  Prisoner  of 
Chilian,  all  written  in  the  years  1813-1816.  These 
poems  at  once  took  the  place  of  Scott's  in  popular 
interest,  dazzling  a  public  that  had  begun  to  weary  , 
of  chivalry  romances,  with  pictures  of  Eastern  life, 
with  incidents  as  exciting  as  Scott's,  descriptions 
as  highly  colored,  and  a  much  greater  intensity  of 
passion.  So  far  as  they  depended  for  this  interest 
upon  the  novelty  of  their  accessories,  the  effect  was 
a  temporary  one.  Seraglios,  divans,  bulbuls,  Gulis- 
tans,  Zuleikas,  and  other  Oriental  properties,  del- 
uged English  poetry  for  a  time,  and  then  subsided; 
even  as  the  tide  of  moss-troopers,  sorcerers,  her- 
mits, and  feudal  castles  had  already  had  its  rise 
and  fall. 

But  there  was  a  deeper  reason  for  the  impression 
made  by  Byron's  poetry  upon  his  contemporaries. 
He  laid  his  finger  right  on  the  sore  spot  in  modern 
life.  He  had  the  disease  with  which  the  time  was 
sick,  the  world-weariness,  the  desperation  which 
proceeded  from  "  passion  incapable  of  being  con- 
verted into  action."  We  find  this  tone  in  much  of 
the  literature  which  followed  the  failure  of  the 
French  Revolution  and  the  Napoleonic  wars. 
From  the  irritations  of  that  period,  the  disappoint- 
ment of  high  hopes  for  the  future  of  the  race,  the 
growing  religious  disbelief,  and  the  revolt  of  de- 
mocracy and  free  thought  against  conservative  re- 
action, sprang  what  Southey  called  the  "Satanic 


FRENCH  REVOLUTION  TO  DEATH  OF  SCOTT.   247 

school,"  which  spoke  its  loudest  word  in  Byron. 
Titanic  is  the  better  word,  for  the  rebellion  was 
not  against  God,  but  Jupiter,  that  is,  against  the 
State,  Church,  and  society  of  Byron's  day;  against 
George  III.,  the  Tory  cabinet  of  Lord  Castlereigh, 
the  Duke  of  Wellington,  the  bench  of  Bishops, 
London  gossip,  the  British  Constitution,  and  Brit- 
ish cant.  In  these  poems  of  Byron,  and  in  his  dra- 
matic experiments,  Manfred  and  Cain,  there  is  a 
single  figure — the  figure  of  Byron  under  various 
masks — and  one  pervading  mood,  a  restless  and 
sardonic  gloom,  a  weariness  of  life,  a  love  of  soli- 
tude, and  a  melancholy  exaltation  in  the  presence 
of  the  wilderness  and  the  sea.  Byron's  hero  is  al- 
ways represented  as  a  man  originally  noble,  whom 
some  great  wrong,  by  others,  or  some  mysterious 
crime  of  his  own,  has  blasted  and  embittered,  and 
who  carries  about  the  world  a  seared  heart  and  a 
somber  brow.  Harold — who  may  stand  as  a  type 
of  all  his  heroes — has  run  "  through  sin's  labyrinth  " 
and  feeling  the  "fullness  of  satiety,"  is  drawn 
abroad  to  roam,  "  the  wandering  exile  of  his  own 
dark  mind."  The  loss  of  a  capacity  for  pure,  un- 
jaded  emotion  is  the  constant  burden  of  Byron's 
lament. 

"  No  more,  no  more,  O  never  more  on  me 

The  freshness  of  the  heart  shall  fall  like  dew." 

and  again, 

"  O  could  I  feel  as  I  have  felt — or  be  what  I  have  been, 

Or  weep  as  I  could  once  have  wept,  o'er  many  a  vanished 


scene 


248  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

As  springs  in  deserts  found  seem  sweet,  all  brackish  tbo'  they 

be, 
So,  midst  the  withered  waste  of  life,  those  tears  would  flow 

to  me." 

This  mood  was  sincere  in  Byron  ;  but  by  cultiva- 
ting it,  and  posing  too  long  in  one  attitude,  he  be- 
came self-conscious  and  theatrical,  and  much  of 
his  serious  poetry  has  a  false  ring.  His  example 
infected  the  minor  poetry  of  the  time,  and  it  was 
quite  natural  that  Thackeray — who  represented  a 
generation  that  had  a  very  different  ideal  of  the  he- 
roic— should  be  provoked  into  describing  Byron  as 
"a  big,  sulky  dandy." 

Byron  was  well  fitted  by  birth  and  temperament 
to  be  the  spokesman  of  this  fierce  discontent.  He 
inherited  from  his  mother  a  haughty  and  violent 
temper,  and  profligate  tendencies  from  his  father. 
He  was  through  life  a  spoiled  child,  whose  main 
characteristic  was  willfulness.  He  liked  to  shock 
people  by  exaggerating  his  wickedness,  or  by  per- 
versely maintaining  the  wrong  side  of  a  dispute. 
But  he  had  traits  of  bravery  and  generosity.  Wom- 
en loved  him,  and  he  made  strong  friends.  There 
was  a  careless  charm  about  him  which  fascinated 
natures  as  unlike  each  other  as  Shelley  and  Scott. 
By  the  death  of  the  fifth  Lord  Byron  without  issue, 
Byron  came  into  a  title  and  estates  at  the  age  of 
ten.  Though  a  liberal  in  politics  he  had  aristo- 
cratic feelings,  and  was  vain  of  his  rank  as  he  was 
of  his  beauty.  He  was  educated  at  Harrow  and  at 
Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  where  he  was  idle  and 


FRENCH  REVOLUTION  TO  DEATH  OF  SCOTT.    249 

dissipated,  but  did  a  great  deal  of  miscellaneous 
reading.  He  took  some  of  his  Cambridge  set — 
Hobhouse,  Matthews,  and  others  —  to  Newstead 
Abbey,  his  ancestral  seat,  where  they  filled  the  an- 
cient cloisters  with  eccentric  orgies.  Byron  was 
strikingly  handsome.  His  face  had  a  spiritual  pale- 
ness and  a  classic  regularity,  and  his  dark  hair  curled 
closely  to  his  head.  A  deformity  in  one  of  his  feet 
was  a  mortification  to  him,  though  it  did  not  great- 
ly impair  his  activity,  and  he  prided  himself  upon 
his  powers  as  a  swimmer. 

In  1815,  when  at  the  height  of  his  literary  and  so- 
cial eclat  in  London,  he  married.  In  February  of  the 
following  year  he  was  separated  from  Lady  Byron, 
and  left  England  forever,  pursued  by  the  execra- 
tions of  outraged  respectability.  In  this  chorus  of 
abuse  there  was  mingled  a  share  of  cant ;  but  Byron 
got,  on  the  whole,  what  he  deserved.  From  Switz- 
erland, where  he  spent  a  summer  by  Lake  Leman, 
with  the  Shelleys  ;  from  Venice,  Ravenna,  Pisa,  and 
Rome,  scandalous  reports  of  his  intrigues  and  his 
wild  debaucheries  were  wafted  back  to  England, 
and  with  these  came  poem  after  poem,  full  of  burn- 
ing genius,  pride,  scorn,  and  anguish,  and  all  hurl- 
ing defiance  at  English  public  opinion.  The  third 
and  fourth  cantos  of  Childe  Harold,  1816-1818,  were 
a  great  advance  upon  the  first  two,  and  contain  the 
best  of  Byron's  serious  poetry.  He  has  written  his 
name  all  over  the  continent  of  Europe,  and  on  a 
hundred  memorable  spots  has  made  the  scenery  his 
own.  On  the  field  of  Waterloo,  on  "  the  castled 


250  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

crag  of  Drachenfels,"  "by  the  blue  rushing  of  the 
arrowy  Rhone,"  in  Venice,  on  the  Bridge  of  Sighs, 
in  the  Coliseum  at  Rome,  and  among  the  "  Isles  of 
Greece,"  the  tourist  is  compelled  to  see  with  By- 
ron's eyes  and  under  the  associations  of  his  pilgrim- 
age. In  his  later  poems,  such  as  Beppo,  1818,  and 
Don  Juati,  1819-1823,  he  passed  into  his  second 
manner,  a  mocking  cynicism  gaining  ground  upon 
the  somewhat  stagy  gloom  of  his  early  poetry — Me- 
phistophiles  gradually  elbowing  out  Satan.  Don 
Juan,  though  morally  the  worst,  is  intellectually 
the  most  vital  and  representative  of  Byron's  poems. 
It  takes  up  into  itself  most  fully  the  life  of  the 
time  ;  exhibits  most  thoroughly  the  characteristic 
alternations  of  Byron's  moods  and  the  prodigal  re- 
sources of  wit,  passion,  and  understanding,  which — 
rather  than  imagination — were  his  prominent  qual- 
ities as  a  poet.  The  hero,  a  graceless,  amorous, 
stripling,  goes  wandering  from  Spain  to  the  Greek 
islands  and  Constantinople,  thence  to  St.  Peters- 
burg, and  finally  to  England.  Every-where  his  se- 
ductions are  successful,  and  Byron  uses  him  as  a 
means  of  exposing  the  weakness  of  the  human  heart 
and  the  rottenness  of  society  in  all  countries.  In 
1823,  breaking  away  from  his  life  of  selfish  indul- 
gence in  Italy,  Byron  threw  himself  into  the  cause 
of  Grecian  liberty,  which  he  had  sung  so  gloriously 
in  the  Isles  of  Greece.  He  died  at  Missolonghi,  in 
the  following  year,  of  a  fever  contracted  by  expos- 
ure and  overwork. 

Byron  was  a  great  poet  but  not  a  great  literary 


FRENCH  REVOLUTION  TO  DEATH  OF  SCOTT.  251 

artist.  He  wrote  negligently  and  with  the  ease  of 
assured  strength,  his  mind  gathering  heat  as  it 
moved,  and  pouring  itself  forth  in  reckless  profu- 
sion. His  work  is  diffuse  and  imperfect ;  much  of 
it  is  melodrama  or  speech-making  rather  than  true 
poetry.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  much,  very  much 
of  it,  is  unexcelled  as  the  direct,  strong,  sincere  ut- 
terance of  personal  feeling.  Such  is  the  quality  of 
his  best  lyrics,  like  When  We  Two  Parted,  the  Elegy 
on  T/'ivrza,  Stanzas  to  Augusta,  She  Walks  in  Beauty, 
and  of  innumerable  passages,  lyrical  and  descrip- 
tive, in  his  longer  poems.  He  had  not  the  wisdom 
of  Wordsworth,  nor  the  rich  and  subtle  imagination 
of  Coleridge,  Shelley,  and  Keats  when  they  were  at 
their  best.  But  he  had  greater  body  and  motive 
force  than  any  of  them.  He  is  the  strongest  per- 
sonality among  English  poets  since  Milton,  though 
his  strength  was  wasted  by  want  of  restraint  and 
self-culture.  In  Milton  the  passion  was  there,  but 
it  was  held  in  check  by  the  will  and  the  artistic 
conscience,  made  subordinate  to  good  ends,  ripened 
by  long  reflection,  and  finally  uttered  in  forms  of 
perfect  and  harmonious  beauty.  Byron's  love  of 
Nature  was  quite  different  in  kind  from  Words- 
worth's. Of  all  English  poets  he  has  sung  most 
lyrically  of  that  national  theme,  the  sea,  as  wit- 
ness among  many  other  passages,  the  famous 
apostrophe  to  the  ocean,  which  closes  Childe 
Harold,  and  the  opening  of  the  third  canto  in  the 
same  poem, 

"  Once  more  upon  the  waters,"  etc. 


252  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

He  bad  a  passion  for  night  and  storm,  because 
they  made  him  forget  himself. 

"  Most  glorious  night ! 

Thou  wert  not  sent  for  slumber  !     Let  me  be 
A  sharer  in  thy  fierce  and  far  delight, 
A  portion  of  the  tempest  and  of  thee  ! " 

Byron's  literary  executor  and  biographer  was  the 
Irish  poet,  Thomas  Moore,  a  born  song-writer, 
whose  Irish  Melodies,  set  to  old  native  airs,  are, 
like  Burns's,  genuine,  spontaneous,  singing,  and  run 
naturally  to  music.  Songs  such  as  the  Meeting  of 
the  Waters,  The  Harp  of  Tara,  Those  Evening  Bells, 
the  Light  of  Other  Days,  Araby's  Daughter,  and  the 
Last  Rose  of  Summer  were,  and  still  are,  popular 
favorites.  Moore's  Oriental  romance,  Lalla  Rookh, 
1817,  is  overladen  with  ornament  and  with  a  sugary 
sentiment  that  clogs  the  palate.  He  had  the  quick 
Irish  wit,  sensibility  rather  than  passion,  and  fancy 
rather  than  imagination. 

Byron's  friend,  Percy  Bysshe  Shelley  (1792- 
1822),  was  also  in  fiery  revolt  against  all  conven- 
tions and  institutions,  though  his  revolt  proceeded 
not,  as  in  Byron's  case,  from  the  turbulence  of  pas- 
sions which  brooked  no  restraint,  but  rather  from 
an  intellectual  impatience  of  any  kind  of  control. 
He  was  not,  like  Byron,  a  sensual  man,  but  temper- 
ate and  chaste.  He  was,  indeed,  in  his  life  and  in 
his  poetry,  as  nearly  a  disembodied  spirit  as  a  hu- 
man creature  can  be.  The  German  poet,  Heine, 
said  that  liberty  was  the  religion  of  this  century, 


FRENCH  REVOLUTION  TO  DEATH  OF  SCOTT.  253 

and  of  this  religion  Shelley  was  a  worshiper.  His 
rebellion  against  authority  began  early.  He  re- 
fused to  fag  at  Eton,  and  was  expelled  from  Ox- 
ford for  publishing  a  tract  on  the  Necessity  of 
Atheism.  At  nineteen,  he  ran  away  with  Harriet 
Westbrook,  and  was  married  to  her  in  Scotland. 
Three  years  later  he  deserted  her  for  Mary  God- 
win, with  whom  he  eloped  to  Switzerland.  Two 
years  after  this  his  first  wife  drowned  herself  in  the 
Serpentine,  and  Shelley  was  then  formally  wedded 
to  Mary  Godwin.  All  this  is  rather  startling,  in 
the  bare  statement  of  it,  yet  it  is  not  inconsistent 
with  the  many  testimonies  that  exist,  to  Shelley's 
singular  purity  and  beauty  of  character,  testimonies 
borne  out  by  the  evidence  of  his  own  writings. 
Impulse  with  him  took  the  place  of  conscience. 
Moral  law,  accompanied  by  the  sanction  of  power, 
and  imposed  by  outside  authority,  he  rejected  as  a 
form  of  tyranny.  His  nature  lacked  robustness 
and  ballast.  Byron,  who  was  at  bottom  intensely 
practical,  said  that  Shelley's  philosophy  was  too 
spiritual  and  romantic.  Hazlitt,  himself  a  Radical, 
wrote  of  Shelley:  "  He  has  a  fire  in  his  eye,  a  fever 
in  his  blood,  a  maggot  in  his  brain,  a  hectic  flutter 
in  his  speech,  which  mark  out  the  philosophic 
fanatic.  He  is  sanguine  complexioned  and  shrill 
voiced."  It  was,  perhaps,  with  some  recollection 
of  this  last-mentioned  trait  of  Shelley  the  man, 
that  Carlyle  wrote  of  Shelley  the  poet,  that  "  the 
sound  of  him  was  shrieky,"  and  that  he  had  "  filled 
the  earth  with  an  inarticulate  wailing." 


254  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

His  career  as  a  poet  began  characteristically 
enough,  with  the  publication,  while  at  Oxford,  of  a 
volume  of  political  rimes,  entitled  Margaret  Nich- 
olson's Remains,  Margaret  Nicholson  being  the 
crazy  woman  who  tried  to  stab  George  III.  His 
boyish  poem,  Queen  Mab,  was  published  in  1813; 
Alastor  in  1 8 1 6,  and  the  Rn'olt  of  Islam — his  longest 
— in  1818,  all  before  he  was  twenty-one.  These 
were  filled  with  splendid,  though  unsubstantial, 
imagery,  but  they  were  abstract  in  subject,  and 
had  the  faults  of  incoherence  and  formlessness 
which  make  Shelley's  longer  poems  wearisome  and 
confusing.  They  sought  to  embody  his  social 
creed  of  Perfectionism,  as  well  as  a  certain  vague 
Pantheistic  system  of  belief  in  a  spirit  of  love  in 
nature  and  man,  whose  presence  is  a  constant 
source  of  obscurity  in  Shelley's  verse.  In  1818 
he  went  to  Italy,  where  the  last  four  years  of  his 
life  were  passed,  and  where,  under  the  influences 
of  Italian  art  and  poetry,  his  writing  became  deeper 
and  stronger.  He  was  fond  of  yachting,  and  spent 
much  of  his  time  upon  the  Mediterranean.  In  the 
summer  of  1822,  his  boat  was  swamped  in  a  squall 
off  the  Gulf  of  Spezzia,  and  Shelley's  drowned  body 
was  washed  ashore,  and  burned  in  the  presence  of 
Byron  and  Leigh  Hunt  The  ashes  were  entombed 
in  the  Protestant  cemetery  at  Rome,  with  the  epi- 
taph, Cor  cordium. 

Shelley's  best  and  maturest  work,  nearly  all  of 
which  was  done  in  Italy,  includes  his  tragedy,  The 
Cenci,  1819,  and  his  lyrical  drama,  Prometheus  Un- 


FRENCH  REVOLUTION  TO  DEATH  OF  SCOTT-  255 

bound^  1821.  The  first  of  these  has  a  unity  and  a 
definiteness  of  contour  unusual  with  Shelley,  and 
is,  with  the  exception  of  some  of  Robert  Brown- 
ing's, the  best  English  tragedy  since  Otway.  Pro- 
metheus represented  to  Shelley's  mind  the  human 
spirit  fighting  against  divine  oppression,  and  in  his 
portrayal  of  this  figure,  he  kept  in  mind^not  only 
the  Prometheus  of  /Eschylus,  but  the  Satan  of 
Paradise  Lost.  Indeed,  in  this  poem,  Shelley  came 
nearer  to  the  sublime  than  any  English  poet  since 
Milton.  Yet  it  is  in  lyrical,  rather  than  in  dra- 
matic, quality  that  Prometheus  Unbound  is  great. 
If  Shelley  be  not,  as  his  latest  editor,  Mr.  Forman, 
claims  him  to  be,  the  foremost  of  English  lyrical 
poets,  he  is  at  lease  the  most  lyrical  of  them.  He 
had,  in  a  supreme  degree,  the  "lyric  cry."  His 
vibrant  nature  trembled  to  every  breath  of  emo- 
tion, and  his  nerves  craved  ever  newer  shocks;  to 
pant,  to  quiver,  to  thrill,  to  grow  faint  in  the  spasm 
of  intense  sensation.  The  feminine  cast  observ- 
able in  Shelley's  portrait  is  borne  out  by  this  trem- 
ulous sensibility  in  his  verse.  It  is  curious  how 
often  he  uses  the  metaphor  of  wings:  of  the  winged 
spirit,  soaring,  like  his  skylark,  till  lost  in  music, 
rapture,  light,  and  then  falling  back  to  earth. 
Three  successive  moods  —  longing,  ecstasy,  and 
the  revulsion  of  despair — are  expressed  in  many 
of  his  lyrics;  as  in  the  Hymn  to  the  Spirit  of 
Nature,  in  Prometheus,  in  the  ode  To  a  Skylark, 
and  in  the  Lines  to  an  Indian  Air  —  Edgar 
Poe's  favorite.  His  passionate  desire  to  lose  him- 


256  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

self  in  Nature,  to  become  one  with  that  spirit  of 
love  and  beauty  in  the  universe,  which  was  to  him 
in  place  of  God,  is  expressed  in  the  Ode  to  the  West 
Wind,  his  most  perfect  poem: 

"  Make  me  thy  lyre,  even  as  the  forest  is  ; 

What  if  my  leaves  are  falling  like  its  own  ! 
The  tumult  of  thy  mighty  harmonies 

Will  take  from  both  a  deep  autumnal  tone. 
Sweet,  though  in  sadness,  be  thou,  Spirit  fierce, 

My  spirit  !  be  thou  me,  impetuous  one  !" 

In  the  lyrical  pieces  already  mentioned,  together 
with  Adonais,  the  lines  Written  in  the  Euganean 
Hills,  Epipsychidion,  Stanzas  Written  in  Dejection 
near  Naples,  A  Dream  of  the  Unknown,  and  many 
others,  Shelley's  lyrical  genius  reaches  a  rarer  love- 
liness and  a  more  faultless  art  than  Byron's  ever 
attained,  though  it  lacks  the  directness  and  mo- 
mentum of  Byron. 

In  Shelley's  longer  poems,  intoxicated  with  the 
music  of  his  own  singing,  he  abandons  himself 
wholly  to  the  guidance  of  his  imagination,  and  the 
verse  seems  to  go  on  of  itself,  like  the  enchanted 
boat  in  Alastor,  with  no  one  at  the  helm.  Vision 
succeeds  vision  in  glorious  but  bewildering  profu- 
sion; ideal  landscapes  and  cities  of  cloud  "pin- 
nacled dim  in  the  intense  inane."  These  poems 
are  like  the  water-falls  in  the  Yosemite,  which, 
tumbling  from  a  height  of  several  thousand  feet, 
are  shattered  into  foam  by  the  air,  and  waved 
about  over  the  valley.  Very  beautiful  is  this  de- 
scending spray,  and  the  rainbow  dwells  in  its 


FRENCH  REVOLUTION  TO  DEATH  OF  SCOTT.  257 

bosom;  but  there  is  no  longer  any  stream,  nothing 
but  an  irridescent  mist.  The  word  etherial  best 
expresses  the  quality  of  Shelley's  genius.  His 
poetry  is  full  of  atmospheric  effects;  of  the  tricks 
which  light  plays  with  the  fluid  elements  ot  water 
and  air;  of  stars,  clouds,  rain,  dew,  mist,  frost, 
wind,  the  foam  of  seas,  the  phases  of  the  moon, 
the  green  shadows  of  waves,  the  shapes  of  flames, 
the  "  golden  lightning  of  the  setting  sun."  Nature, 
in  Shelley,  wants  homeliness  and  relief.  While 
poets  like  Wordsworth  and  Burns  let  in  an  ideal 
light  upon  the  rough  fields  of  earth,  Shelley 
escapes  into  a  "  moonlight-colored  "  realm  of  shad- 
ows and  dreams,  among  whose  abstractions  the 
heart  turns  cold.  One  bit  of  Wordsworth's  mount- 
ain turf  is  worth  them  all. 

By  the  death  of  John  Keats  (1796-1821),  whose 
elegy  Shelley  sang  in  Adonais,  English  poetry  suf- 
fered an  irreparable  loss.  His  Endymion,  1818, 
though  disfigured  by  mawkishness  and  by  some  af- 
fectations of  manner,  was  rich  in  promise.  Its 
faults  were  those  of  youth,  the  faults  of  exuber- 
ance and  of  a  tremulous  sensibility,  which  time 
corrects.  Hyperion,  1820,  promised  to  be  his  mas- 
terpiece, but  he  left  it  unfinished — "  a  Titanic 
torso  " — because,  as  he  said,  "  there  were  too  many 
Miltonic  inversions  in  it."  The  subject  was  the 
displacement,  by  Phoebus  Apollo,  of  the  ancient 
sun-god,  Hyperion,  the  last  of  the  Titans  who  re- 
tained his  dominion.  It  was  a  theme  of  great 
capabilities,  and  the  poem  was  begun  by  Keats, 
17 


258  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

with  a  strength  of  conception  which  leads  to  the 
belief  that  here  was  once  more  a  really  epic  genius, 
had  fate  suffered  it  to  mature.  The  fragment,  as 
it  stands — "  that  inlet  to  severe  magnificence  " — 
proves  how  rapidly  Keats's  diction  was  clarifying. 
He  had  learned  to  string  up  his  looser  chords. 
There  is  nothing  maudlin  in  Hyperion ;  all  there 
is  in  whole  tones  and  in  the  grand  manner,  "as 
sublime  as  ^Eschylus,"  said  Byron,  with  the  grave, 
antique  simplicity,  and  something  of  modern  sweet- 
ness interfused. 

Keats's  father  was  a  groom  in  a  London  livery- 
stable.  The  poet  was  apprenticed  at  fifteen  to  a 
surgeon.  At  school  he  had  studied  Latin,  but  not 
Greek.  He,  who  of  all  English  poets  had  the  most 
purely  Hellenic  spirit,  made  acquaintance  with 
Greek  literature  and  art  only  through  the  medium 
of  classical  dictionaries,  translations,  and  popular 
mythologies;  and  later  through  the  marbles  and 
casts  in  the  British  Museum.  His  friend,  the  art- 
ist Haydon,  lent  him  a  copy  of  Chapman's  Homer, 
and  the  impression  that  it  made  upon  him  he  re- 
corded in  his  sonnet,  On  First  Looking  into  Chap- 
man s  Homer.  Other  poems  of  the  same  inspira- 
"Hn  are  his  three  sonnets,  To  Homer,  On  Seeing  the 
tflgin  Marbles,  On  a  Picture  of  Leander,  Lamia, 
and  the  beautiful  Ode  on  a  Grecian  Urn.  But 
Keats's  art  was  retrospective  and  eclectic,  the  blos- 
som of  a  double  root;  and  "golden-tongued  Ro- 
mance with  serene  lute  "  had  her  part  in  him,  as 
well  as  the  classics.  In  his  seventeenth  year  he 


FRENCH  REVOLUTION  TO  DEATH  OF  SCOTT.    259 

had  read  the  Faery  Queene,  and  from  Spender  he 
went  on  to  a  study  of  Chaucer,  Shakspere,  and  Mil- 
ton. Then  he  took  up  Italian  and  read  Ariosto. 
The  influence  of  these  studies  is  seen  in  his  poem, 
Isabella,  or  the  Pot  of  Basil,  taken  from  a  story  of 
Boccaccio  ;  in  his  wild  ballad,  La  Belle  Dame  sans 
Merci ;  and  in  his  love  tale,  the  Eve  of  Saint 
Agnes,  with  its  wealth  of  medieval  adornment.  In 
the  Ode  to  Autumn,  and  Ode  to  a  Nightingale,  the 
Hellenic  choiceness  is  found  touched  with  the 
warmer  hues  of  romance. 

There  is  something  deeply  tragic  in  the  short 
story  of  Keats's  life.  The  seeds  of  consumption 
were  in  him ;  he  felt  the  stirrings  of  a  potent 
genius,  but  knew  that  he  could  not  wait  for  it  to 
unfold,  but  must  die 

"  Before  high-piled  books,  in  charactry 
Hold  like  rich  garners  the  full-ripened  grain." 

His  disease  was  aggravated,  possibly,  by  the  stupid 
brutality  with  which  the  reviewers  had  treated  En- 
dymion  ;  and  certainly  by  the  hopeless  love  which 
devoured  him.  "The  very  thing  which  I  want  to 
live  most  for,"  he  wrote,  "  will  be  a  great  occasion 
of  my  death.  If  I  had  any  chance  of  recovery, 
this  passion  would  kill  me."  In  the  autumn  of 
1820,  his  disease  gaining  apace,  he  went  on  a  sail- 
ing vessel  to  Italy,  accompanied  by  a  single  friend, 
a  young  artist  named  Severn.  The  change  was  of 
no  avail,  and  he  died  at  Rome  a  few  weeks  after, 
in  his  twenty-sixth  year. 


260  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

Keats  was,  above  all  things,  the  artist,  with  that 
love  of  the  beautiful  and  that  instinct  for  its  repro- 
duction which  are  the  artist's  divinest  gifts.  He 
cared  little  about  the  politics  and  philosophy  of  his 
day,  and  he  did  not  make  his  poetry  the  vehicle 
of  ideas.  It  was  sensuous  poetry,  the  poetry  of 
youth  and  gladness.  But  if  he  had  lived,  and  if,  with 
wider  knowledge  of  men  and  deeper  experience  of 
life,  he  had  attained  to  Wordsworth's  spiritual  in- 
sight and  to  Byron's  power  of  passion  and  under- 
standing, he  would  have  become  a  greater  poet  than 
either.  For  he  had  a  style — a  "natural  magic  " — 
which  only  needed  the  chastening  touch  of  a  finer 
culture  to  make  it  superior  to  any  thing  in  mod- 
ern English  poetry  and  to  force  us  back  to  Milton 
or  Shakspere  for  a  comparison.  His  tombstone, 
not  far  from  Shelley's,  bears  the  inscription  of  his 
own  choosing:  "  Here  lies  one  whose  name  was 
wnt  in  water."  But  it  would  be  within  the  limits 
of  truth  to  say  that  it  is  written  in  large'characters 
on  most  of  our  contemporary  poetry.  "Words- 
worth," says  Lowell,  "  has  influenced  most  the  ideas 
of  succeeding  poets  ;  Keats  their  forms."  And  he 
has  influenced  these  out  of  all  proportion  to  the 
amount  which  he  left,  or  to  his  intellectual  range, 
by  virtue  of  the  exquisite  quality  of  his  technique. 

1.  Wordsworth's  Poems.     Chosen  and  edited  by 
Matthew  Arnold.     London,  1879. 

2.  Poetry  of  Byron.     Chosen  and  arranged  by 
Matthew  Arnold.     London,  1881. 


FRENCH  REVOLUTION  TO  DEATH  OF  SCOTT.  261 

• 

3.  Shelley.     Julian  and   Maddalo,   Prometheus 
Unbound,  The  Cenci,  Lyrical  Pieces. 

4.  Landor.     Pericles  and  Aspasia. 

5.  Coleridge.     Table    Talk,    Notes    on    Shaks- 
pere,  The  Ancient  Mariner,  Christabel,  Love,  Ode 
to  France,  Ode  to  the  Departing  Year,  Kubla  Khan, 
Hymn  before  Sunrise  in  the  Vale  of  Chamouni, 
Youth  and  Age,  Frost  at  Midnight. 

6.  De    Quincey.      Confessions    of   an    English 
Opium  Eater,  Flight  of  a  Tartar  Tribe,  Biograph- 
ical Sketches. 

7.  Scott.      Waverley,     Heart     of    Midlothian, 
Bride  of  Lammermoor,  Rob  Roy,  Antiquary,  Mar- 
mion,  Lady  of  the  Lake. 

8.  Keats.     Hyperion,  Eve  of  St.  Agnes,  Lyrical 
Pieces. 

9.  Mrs.  Oliphant's  Literary  History  of  England, 

Centuries. 


262  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 


CHAPTER    VIII. 

FROM    THE    DEATH    OF    SCOTT    TO 
THE   PRESENT   TIME. 

1832-1886. 

THE  literature  of  the  past  fifty  years  is  too  close 
to  our  eyes  to  enable  the  critic  to  pronounce  a 
final  judgment,  or  the  literary  historian  to  get  a 
true  perspective.  Many  of  the  principal  writers 
of  the  time  are  still  living,  and  many  others  have 
been  dead  but  a  few  years.  This  concluding 
chapter,  therefore,  will  be  devoted  to  the  consid- 
eration of  the  few  who  stand  forth,  incontestably, 
as  the  leaders  of  literary  thought,  and  who  seem 
likely,  under  all  future  changes  of  fashion  and 
taste,  to  remain  representative  of  their  generation. 
As  regards  form,  the  most  striking  fact  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  period  under  review  is  the  immense 
preponderance  in  its  imaginative  literature  of  prose 
fiction,  of  the  novel  of  real  life.  The  povel  has 
become  to  the  solitary  reader  of  to-day  what  the 
stage  play  was  to  the  audiences  of  Elisabeth's  reign, 
or  the  periodical  essay,  like  the  Tatlers  and  Spec- 
tators, to  the  clubs  and  breakfast-tables  of  Queen 
Anne's.  And,  if  its  criticism  of  life  is  less  concen- 
trated and  brilliant  than  the  drama  gives,  it  is  fai 


DEATH  OF  SCOTT  TO  PRESENT  TIME.      263 

more  searching  and  minute.  No  period  has  ever 
left  in  its  literary  records  so  complete  a  picture  of 
its  whole  society  as  the  period  which  is  just  clos- 
ing. At  any  other  time  than  the  present,  the 
names  of  authors  like  Charlotte  Bronte,  Charles 
Kingsley,  and  Charles  Reade — names  which  are 
here  merely  mentioned  in  passing — besides  many 
others  which  want  of  space  forbids  us  even  to 
mention — would  be  of  capital  importance.  As  it  is, 
we  must  limit  our  review  to  the  three  acknowledged 
masters  of  modern  English  fiction,  Charles  Dickens 
(1812-1870),  William  Makepeace  Thackeray  (1811 
-1863),  and  "George  Eliot "  (Mary  Ann  Evans, 
1819-1880). 

It  is  sometimes  helpful  to  reduce  a  great  writer 
to  his  lowest  term,  in  order  to  see  what  the  pre- 
vailing bent  of  his  genius  is.  This  lowest  term 
may  often  be  found  in  his  early  work,  before  expe- 
rience of  the  world  has  overlaid  his  original  im- 
pulse with  foreign  accretions.  Dickens  was  much 
more  than  a  humorist,  Thackeray  than  a  satirist,  and 
George  Eliot  than  a  moralist ;  but  they  had  their 
starting-points  respectively  in  humor,  in  burlesque, 
and  in  strong  ethical  and  religious  feeling.  Dick- 
ens began  with  a  broadly  comic  series  of  papers, 
contributed  to  the  Old  Magazine  and  the  Evening 
Chronicle,  and  reprinted  in  book  form,  in  r836,  as 
Sketches  by  Boz.  The  success  of  these  suggested 
to  a  firm  of  publishers  the  preparation  of  a  num- 
ber of  similar  sketches  of  the  misadventures  of 
cockney  sportsmen,  to  accompany  plates  by  the 


264  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

comic  draughtsman,  Mr.  R.  Seymour.  This  sug- 
gestion resulted  in  the  Pickwick  Papers,  published 
in  monthly  installments,  in  1836-1837.  The  series 
grew,  under  Dickens's  hand,  into  a  continuous, 
though  rather  loosely  strung  narrative  of  the  do- 
ings of  a  set  of  characters,  conceived  with  such 
exuberant  and  novel  humor  that  it  took  the  public 
by  storm,  and  raised  its  author  at  once  to  fame- 
Pickwick  is  by  no  means  Dickens's  best,  but  it  is  his 
most  characteristic,  and  most  popular,  book.  At 
the  time  that  he  wrote  these  early  sketches  he  was 
a  reporter  for  the  Morning  Chronicle.  His  natu- 
rally acute  powers  of  observation  had  been  trained 
in  this  pursuit  to  the  utmost  efficiency,  and  there 
always  continued  to  be  about  his  descriptive  writ- 
ing a  reportorial  and  newspaper  air.  He  had  the 
eye  for  effect,  the  sharp  fidelity  to  detail,  the 
instinct  for  rapidly  seizing  upon  and  exaggerating 
the  salient  point,  which  are  developed  by  the  re- 
quirements of  modern  journalism.  Dickens  knew 
London  as  no  one  else  has  ever  known  it,  and,  in 
particular,  he  knew  its  hideous  and  grotesque  re- 
cesses, with  the  strange  developments  of  human 
nature  that  abide  there;  slums  like  Tom-all-Alone's, 
in  Bleak  House;  the  river-side  haunts  of  Rogue  Rid- 
erhood,  in  Our  Mutual  Friend  ;  as  well  as  the  old 
inns,  like  the  "  White  Hart,"  and  the  "  dusky  pur- 
lieus of  the  law."  As  a  man,  his  favorite  occupa- 
tion was  walking  the  streets,  where,  as  a  child,  he 
had  picked  up  the  most  valuable  part  of  his  educa- 
tion. His  tramps  about  London — often  after  night- 


DEATH  OF  SCOTT  TO  PRESENT  TIME.      265 

fall — sometimes  extended  to  fifteen  miles  in  a  day. 
He  knew,  too,  the  shifts  of  poverty.  His  father — 
some  traits  of  whom  are  preserved  in  Mr.  Micaw- 
ber — was  imprisoned  for  debt  in  the  Marshalsea 
prison,  where  his  wife  took  lodging  with  him,  while 
Charles,  then  a  boy  of  ten,  was  employed  at  six 
shillings  a  week  to  cover  blacking-pots  in  Warner's 
blacking  warehouse.  The  hardships  and  loneli- 
ness of  this  part  of  his  life  are  told  under  a  thin 
disguise  in  Dickens's  masterpiece,  David  Copper- 
field,  the  most  autobiographical  of  his  novels. 
From  these  young  experiences  he  gained  that  in- 
sight into  the  lives  of  the  lower  classes,  and  that 
sympathy  with  children  and  with  the  poor  which 
shine  out  in  his  pathetic  sketches  of  Little  Nell, 
in  The  Old  Curiosity  Shop,  of  Paul  Dombey,  of 
Poor  Jo,  in  Bleak  House,  of  "  the  Marchioness,"  and 
a  hundred  other  figures. 

In  Oliver  Twist,  contributed,  during  1837-1838, 
to  Bentley's  Miscellany,  a  monthly  magazine  of  which 
Dickens  was  editor,  he  produced  his  first  regular 
novel.  In  this  story  of  the  criminal  classes  the 
author  showed  a  tragic  power  which  he  had  not 
hitherto  exhibited.  Thenceforward  his  career  was 
a  series  of  dazzling  successes.  It  is  impossible 
here  to  particularize  his  numerous  novels,  sketches, 
short  tales,  and  "  Christmas  Stories  " — the  latter  a 
fashion  which  he  inaugurated,  and  which  has  pro- 
duced a  whole  literature  in  itself.  In  Nicholas 
Nickleby,  1839;  Master  Humphrey's  Clock,  1840; 
Martin  Chuzzlewit,  1 844  ;  Dombey  and  Son,  1 848 ; 


266  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

David  Copperfield,  1850  ;  and  Bleak  House,  1853, 
there  is  no  falling  off  in  strength.  The  last  named 
was,  in  some  respects,  and  especially  in  the  skill- 
ful construction  of  the  plot,  his  best  novel.  In 
some  of  his  latest  books,  as  Great  Expectations,  1861, 
and  Our  Mutual  Friend,  1865,  there  are  signs  of  a 
decline.  This  showed  itself  in  an  unnatural  exag- 
geration of  characters  and  motives,  and  a  painful 
straining  after  humorous  effects ;  faults,  indeed, 
from  which  Dickens  was  never  wholly  free.  There 
was  a  histrionic  side  to  him,  which  came  out  in 
his  fondness  for  private  theatricals,  in  which  he  ex- 
hibited remarkable  talent,  and  in  the  dramatic  ac- 
tion which  he  introduced  into  the  delightful  pub- 
lic readings  from  his  works  that  he  gave  before 
vast  audiences  all  over  the  United  Kingdom,  and 
in  his  two  visits  to  America.  It  is  not  surprising, 
either,  to  learn  that  upon  the  stage  his  preference 
was  for  melodrama  and  farce.  His  own  serious 
writing  was  always  dangerously  close  to  the  melo- 
dramatic, and  his  humor  to  the  farcical.  There  is 
much  false  art,  bad  taste,  and  even  vulgarity  in 
Dickens.  He  was  never  quite  a  gentleman,  and 
never  succeeded  well  in  drawing  gentlemen  or 
ladies.  In  the  region  of  low  comedy  he  is  easily 
the  most  original,  the  most  inexhaustible,  the  most 
wonderful  of  modern  humorists.  Creations  such 
as  Mrs.  Nickleby,  Mr.  Micawber,  Sam  Weller, 
Sairy  Gamp,  take  rank  with  Falstaff  and  Dogberry; 
while  many  others,  like  Dick  Swiveller,  Stiggins, 
Chadband,  Mrs.  Jellyby,  and  Julia  Mills  are  almost 


DEATH  OF  SCOTT  TO  PRESENT  TIME.      267 

equally  good.  In  the  innumerable  swarm  of  minor 
characters  with  which  he  has  enriched  our  comic 
literature,  there  is  no  indistinctness.  Indeed,  the 
objection  that  has  been  made  to  him  is  that  his 
characters  are  too  distinct — that  he  puts  labels  on 
them  ;  that  they  are  often  mere  personifications  of 
a  single  trick  of  speech  or  manner,  which  becomes 
tedious  and  unnatural  by  repetition;  thus,  Grand- 
father Smallweed  is  always  settling  down  into  his 
cushion,  and  having  to  be  shaken  up ;  Mr.  Jellyby 
is  always  sitting  with  his  head  against  the  wall ; 
Peggotty  is  always  bursting  her  buttons  off,  etc.,  etc. 
As  Dickens's  humorous  characters  tend  perpetually 
to  run  into  caricatures  and  grotesques,  so  his  sen- 
timent, from  the  same  excess,  slops  over  too  fre- 
quently into  "gush, "and  into  a  too  deliberate  and 
protracted  attack  upon  the  pity.  A  favorite  hu- 
morous device  in  his  style  is  a  stately  and  rounda- 
bout way  of  telling  a  trivial  incident,  as  where,  for 
example,  Mr.  Roker  "  muttered  certain  unpleasant 
invocations  concerning  his  own  eyes,  limbs,  and  cir- 
culating fluids;"  or  where  the  drunken  man  who  is 
singing  comic  songs  in  the  Fleet  received  from  Mr. 
Smangle  "  a  gentle  intimation,  through  the  medium 
of  the  water-jug,  that  his  audience  were  not  mu- 
sically disposed."  This  manner  was  original  with 
Dickens,  though  he  may  have  taken  a  hint  of  it 
from  the  mock  heroic  language  of  Jonathan 
Wild;  but  as  practiced  by  a  thousand  imitators, 
ever  since,  it  has  gradually  become  a  burden. 
It  would  not  be  the  whole  truth  to  say  that  the 


268  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

difference  between  the  humor  of  Thackeray  and 
Dickens  is  the  same  as  between  that  of  Shakspere 
and  Ben  Jonson.  Yet  it  is  true  that  the  "  humors  " 
of  Ben  Jonson  have  an  analogy  with  the  extremer 
instances  of  Dickens's  character  sketches  in  this 
respect,  namely  :  that  they  are  both  studies  of  the 
eccentric,  the  abnormal,  the  whimsical,  rather  than 
of  the  typical  and  universal — studies  of  manners, 
rather  than  of  whole  characters.  And  it  is  easily 
conceivable  that,  at  no  distant  day,  the  oddities  of 
Captain  Cuttle,  Deportment  Turveydrop,  Mark 
Tapley,  and  Newman  Noggs  will  seem  as  far-fetched 
and  impossible  as  those  of  Captain  Otter,  Fastidi- 
ous Brisk,  and  Sir  Amorous  La-Foole. 

When  Dickens  was  looking  about  for  some  one 
to  take  Seymour's  place  as  illustrator  of  Pickwick, 
Thackeray  applied  for  the  job,  but  without  suc- 
cess. He  was  then  a  young  man  of  twenty-five,  and 
still  hesitating  between  art  and  literature.  He  had 
begun  to  draw  caricatures  with  his  pencil  when  a 
school-boy  at  the  Charter  House,  and  to  scribble 
them  with  his  pen  when  a  student  at  Cambridge, 
editing  The  Snob,  a  weekly  under-graduate  paper, 
and  parodying  the  prize  poem  Timbuctoo  of  his 
contemporary  at  the  university,  Alfred  Tennyson. 
Then  he  went  abroad  to  study  art,  passing  a  sea- 
son at  Weimar,  where  he  met  Goethe  and  filled  the 
albums  of  the  young  Saxon  ladies  with  carica- 
tures ;  afterward  living,  in  the  Latin  Quarter  at 
Paris,  a  Bohemian  existence,  studying  art  in  a  des- 
ultory way,  and  seeing  men  and  cities ;  accumu- 


DEATH  OF  SCOTT  TO  PRESENT  TIME.     269 

iating  portfolios  full  of  sketches,  but  laying  up 
stores  of  material  to  be  used  afterward  to  greater 
advantTge  when  he  should  settle  upon  his  true 
medium  of  expression.  By  1837,  having  lost  his 
fortune  of  ^500  a  year  in  speculation  and  gam- 
bling, he  began  to  contribute  to  Eraser's,  and 
thereafter  to  the  New  Monthly,  Cruikshank's 
Comic  Almanac,  Punch,  and  other  periodicals, 
clever  burlesques,  art  criticisms  by  "  Michael  An- 
gelo  Titmarsh,"  Yellow  Plush  Papers,  and  all  man- 
ner of  skits,  satirical  character  sketches,  and 
humorous  tales,  like  the  Great  Hoggarty  Diamond 
and  the  Luck  of  Barry  Lyndon.  Some  of  these 
were  collected  in  the  Paris  Sketch-Book,  1840,  and 
the  Irish  Sketch-Book,  1843  ;  but  Thackeray  was 
slow  in  winning  recognition,  and  it  was  not  until 
the  publication  of  his  first  great  novel,  Vanity 
Fair,  in  monthly  parts,  during  1846-1848,  that  he 
achieved  any  thing  like  the  general  reputation 
which  Dickens  had  reached  at  a  bound.  Vanity 
fair  described  itself,  on  its  title-page,  as  "a  novel 
without  a  hero."  It  was  also  a  novel  without  a 
plot — in  the  sense  in  which  Bleak  House  or  Nicho- 
las Nickleby  had  a  plot — and  in  that  respect  it  set 
the  fashion  for  the  latest  school  of  realistic  fiction, 
being  a  transcript  of  life,  without  necessary  be- 
ginning or  end.  Indeed,  one  of  the  pleasantest 
things  10  a  reader  of  Thackeray  is  the  way  which 
his  characters  have  of  re-appearing,  as  old  ac- 
quaintances, in  his  different  books;  just  as,  in 
real  life,  people  drop  out  of  mind  and  then  turn 


270  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

up  again  in  other  years  and  places.  Vanity  Fair 
is  Thackeray's  masterpiece,  but  it  is  not  the  best 
introduction  to  his  writings.  There  are  no  illu- 
sions in  it,  and,  to  a  young  reader  fresh  from  Scott's 
romances  or  Dickens's  sympathetic  extravagances, 
it  will  seem  hard  and  repellant.  But  men  who, 
like  Thackeray,  have  seen  life  and  tasted  its  bitter- 
ness and  felt  its  hollowness,  know  how  to  prize  it. 
Thackeray  does  not  merely  expose  the  cant,  the 
emptiness,  the  self-seeking,  the  false  pretenses, 
flunkeyism,  and  snobbery — the  "  mean  admiration 
of  mean  things  " — in  the  great  world  of  London 
society  :  his  keen,  unsparing  vision  detects  the 
base  alloy  in  the  purest  natures.  There  are  no 
"  heroes  "  in  his  books,  no  perfect  characters. 
Even  his  good  women,  such  as  Helen  and  Laura 
Pendennis,  are  capable  of  cruel  injustice  toward 
less  fortunate  sisters,  like  little  Fanny  ;  and  Amelia 
Sedley  is  led,  by  blind  feminine  instinct,  to  snub 
and  tyrannize  over  poor  Dobbin.  The  shabby 
miseries  of  life,  the  numbing  and  belittling  influ- 
ences of  failure  and  poverty  upon  the  most  gener- 
ous natures,  are  the  tragic  themes  which  Thack- 
eray handles  by  preference.  He  has  been  called 
a  cynic,  but  the  boyish  playfulness  of  his  humor 
and  his  kindly  spirit  are  incompatible  with  cyni- 
cism. Charlotte  Bronte  said  that  Fielding  was  the 
vulture  and  Thackeray  the  eagle.  The  comparison 
would  have  been  truer  if  made  between  Swift  and 
Thackeray.  Swift  was  a  cynic  ;  his  pen  was  driven 
by  hate,  but  Thackeray's  by  love,  and  it  was  not 


DEATH  OF  SCOTT  TO  PRESENT  TIME.     271 

in  bitterness  but  in  sadness  that  the  latter  laid 
bare  the  wickedness  of  the  world.  He  was  him- 
self a  thorough  man  of  the  world,  and  he  had  that 
dislike  for  a  display  of  feeling  which  characterizes 
the  modern  Englishman.  But  behind  his  satiric 
mask  he  concealed  the  manliest  tenderness,  and  a 
reverence  for  every  thing  in  human  nature  that  is 
good  and  true.  Thackeray's  other  great  novels 
are  Pendennis,  1849  ;  Henry  Esmond,  1852  ;  and 
The  Newcomes,  1855 — the  last  of  which  contains 
his  most  lovable  character,  the  pathetic  and  im- 
mortal figure  of  Colonel  Newcome,  a  creation 
worthy  to  stand,  in  its  dignity  and  its  sublime 
weakness,  by  the  side  of  Don  Quixote.  It  was 
alleged  against  Thackeray  that  he  made  all  his 
good  characters,  like  Major  Dobbin  and  Amelia 
Sedley  and  Colonel  Newcome,  intellectually  feeble, 
and  his  brilliant  characters,  like  Becky  Sharp  and 
Lord  Steyne  and  Blanche  Amory,  morally  bad. 
This  is  not  entirely  true,  but  the  other  complaint 
— that  his  women  are  inferior  to  his  men — is  true 
in  a  general  way.  Somewhat  inferior  to  his  other 
novels  were  The  Virginians,  1858,  and  The  Advent- 
ures of  Philip,  1862.  All  of  these  were  stories  of 
contemporary  life,  except  Henry  Esmond  and  its 
sequel,  The  Virginians,  which,  though  not  precisely 
historical  fictions,  introduced  historical  figures, 
such  as  Washington  and  the  Earl  of  Peterborough. 
Their  period  of  action  was  the  i8th  century, 
and  the  dialogue  was  a  cunning  imitation  of  the 
language  of  that  time.  Thackeray  was  strongly 


272  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

attracted  by  the  i8th  century.  His  literary  teach- 
ers were  Addison,  Swift,  Steele,  Gay,  Johnson, 
Richardson,  Goldsmith,  Fielding,  Smollett,  and 
Sterne,  and  his  special  master  and  model  was 
Fielding,  He  projected  a  history  of  the  century, 
and  his  studies  in  this  kind  took  shape  in  his  two 
charming  series  of  lectures  on  The  English  Hu- 
morists and  The  Four  Georges.  These  he  delivered 
in  England  and  in  America,  to  which  country  he, 
like  Dickens,  made  two  several  visits. 

Thackeray's  genius  was,  perhaps,  less  astonish- 
ing than  Dickens's,  less  fertile,  spontaneous,  and 
inventive  ;  but  his  art  is  sounder,  and  his  delinea- 
tion of  character  more  truthful.  After  one  has 
formed  a  taste  for  his  books,  Dickens's  sentiment 
will  seem  overdone,  and  much  of  his  humor  will 
have  the  air  of  buffoonery.  Thackeray  had  the 
advantage  in  another  particular  :  he  described  the 
life  of  the  upper  classes,  and  Dickens  of  the  lower. 
It  may  be  true  that  the  latter  offers  richer  mate- 
rial to  the  novelist,  in  the  play  of  elementary  pas- 
sions and  in  strong,  native  developments  of  char- 
acter. It  is  true,  also,  that  Thackeray  approached 
"  society"  rather  to  satirize  it  than  to  set  forth  its 
agreeableness.  Yet,  after  all,  it  is  "  the  great 
world  "  which  he  describes,  that  world  upon  which 
the  broadening  and  refining  processes  of  a  high 
civilization  have  done  their  utmost,  and  which, 
consequently,  must  possess  an  intellectual  interest 
superior  to  any  thing  in  the  life  of  London  thieves, 
traveling  showmen,  and  coachees.  Thackeray  is 


DEATH  OF  SCOTT  TO  PRESENT  TIME.     273 

the  equal  of  Swift  as  a  satirist,  of  Dickens  as  a 
humorist,  and  of  Scott  as  a  novelist.  The  one 
element  lacking  in  him — and  which  Scott  had  irv 
a  high  degree — is  the  poetic  imagination.  "  I  have 
no  brains  above  my  eyes,"  he  said  ;  "  I  describe 
what  I  see."  Hence  there  is  wanting  in  his  crea- 
tions that  final  charm  which  Shakspere's  have.  For 
what  the  eyes  see  is  not  all. 

The  great  woman  who  wrote  under  the  pen-name 
of  George  Eliot  was  a  humorist,  too.  She  had  a 
rich,  deep  humor  of  her  own,  and  a  wit  that  crystal- 
lized into  sayings  which  are  not  epigrams,  only  be- 
cause their  wisdom  strikes  more  than  their  smart- 
ness. But  humor  was  not,  as  with  Thackeray  and 
Dickens,  her  point  of  view.  A  country  girl,  the 
daughter  of  a  land  agent  and  surveyor  at  Nuneaton, 
in  Warwickshire,  her  early  letters  and  journals  ex- 
hibit a  Calvinistic  gravity  and  moral  severity. 
Later,  when  her  truth  to  her  convictions  led  her 
to  renounce  the  Christian  belief,  she  carried  into 
Positivism  the  same  religious  earnestness,  and 
wrote  the  one  English  hymn  of  the  religion  of  hu- 
manity: 

"  O,  let  me  join  the  choir  invisible,"  etc. 

Her  first  published  work  was  a  translation  of 
Strauss's  Leben  Jesu,  1846.  In  1851  she  went  to 
London  and  became  one  of  the  editors  of  the 
Radical  organ,  the  Westminster  Review.  Here  she 
formed  a  connection — a  marriage  in  all  but  the 
name — with  George  Henry  Lewes,  who  was.  like 
18 


274  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

herself,  a  freethinker,  and  who  published,  among 
other  things,  a  Biographical  History  of  Philosophy. 
Lewes  had  also  written  fiction,  and  it  was  at  his 
suggestion  that  his  wife  undertook  story  writing. 
Her  Scenes  of  Clerical  Life  were  contributed  to 
Blackwood's  Magazine  for  1857,  and  published  in 
book  form  in  the  following  year.  Adam  Bede  fol- 
lowed in  1859,  the  Mill  on  the  Floss  in  1860,  Silas 
Marner  in  1861,  Romola  in  1863,  Felix  Holt  in 
1866,  and  Middlemarch  in  1872.  All  of  these,  ex- 
cept Romola,  are  tales  of  provincial,  and  largely  of 
domestic,  life  in  the  midland  counties.  Romola  is 
a  historical  novel,  the  scene  of  which  is  Florence, 
in  the  i5th  century,  the  Florence  of  Macchia- 
velli  and  of  Savonarola.  George  Eliot's  method 
was  very  different  from  that  of  Thackeray  or 
Dickens.  She  did  not  crowd  her  canvas  with  the 
swarming  life  of  cities.  Her  figures  are  compara- 
tively few,  and  they  are  selected  from  the  middle- 
class  families  of  rural  parishes  or  small  towns,  amid 
that  atmosphere  of  "  fine  old  leisure,"  whose  dis- 
appearance she  lamented.  Her  drama  is  a  still 
life  drama,  intensely  and  profoundly  inward. 
Character  is  the  stuff  that  she  works  in,  and  she 
deals  with  it  more  subtly  than  Thackeray.  With 
him  the  tragedy  is  produced  by  the  pressure  of  so- 
ciety and  its  false  standards  upon  the  individual ; 
with  her,  by  the  malign  influence  of  individuals 
upon  one  another.  She  watches  "  the  stealthy  con- 
vergence of  human  fates,"  the  intersection  at  vari- 
ous angles  of  the  planes  of  character,  the  power 


DEATH  OF  SCOTT  TO  PRESENT  TIME.     275 

that  the  lower  nature  has  to  thwart,  stupefy,  or 
corrupt  the  higher,  which  has  become  entangled 
with  it  in  the  mesh  of  destiny.  At  the  bottom  of 
every  one  of  her  stories,  there  is  a  problem  of  the 
conscience  or  the  intellect.  In  this  respect  she 
resembles  Hawthorne,  though  she  is  not,  like  him, 
a  romancer,  but  a  realist. 

There  is  a  melancholy  philosophy  in  her  books, 
most  of  which  are  tales  of  failure  or  frustration. 
The  Mill  on  the  Floss  contains  a  large  element  of 
autobiography,  and  its  heroine,  Maggie  Tulliver, 
is,  perhaps,  her  idealized  self.  Her  aspirations 
after  a  fuller  and  nobler  existence  are  condemne( 
to  struggle  against  the  resistance  of  a  narrow,  pro- 
vincial environment,  and  the  pressure  of  untoward 
fates.  She  is  tempted  to  seek  an  escape  even 
through  a  desperate  throwing  off  of  moral  obliga- 
tions, and  is  driven  back  to  her  duty  only  to  die  by 
a  sudden  stroke  of  destiny.  "  Life  is  a  bad  busi- 
ness," wrote  George  Eliot,  in  a  letter  to  a  friend, 
"and  we  must  make  the  most  of  it."  Adam  Bedc 
is,  in  construction,  the  most  perfect  of  her  novels, 
and  Silas  Marner  of  her  shorter  stories.  Her  an- 
alytic habit  gained  more  and  more  upon  her  as  she 
wrote.  Middlemarch,  in  some  respects  her  greatest 
book,  lacks  the  unity  of  her  earlier  novels,  and  the 
story  tends  to  become  subordinate  to  the  work- 
ing out  of  character  stories  and  social  problems. 
The  philosophic  speculations,  which  she  shared 
with  her  husband,  were  seemingly  unfavorable 
to  her  artistic  growth,  a  circumstance  which  be- 


276  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

comes  apparent  in  her  last  novel,  Daniel  Deronda, 
1877.  Finally  in  the  Impressions  of  Theophrastus 
Suc/i,  1879,  sne  abandoned  narrative  altogether, 
and  recurred  to  that  type  of  "  character  "  books 
which  we  have  met,  as  a  flourishing  department  of 
literature  in  the  i7th  century,  represented  by  such 
works  as  Earle's  Microcosmographie  and  Fuller's 
Holy  and  Profane  State.  The  moral  of  George 
Eliot's  writings  is  not  obtruded.  She  never  made 
the  artistic  mistake  of  writing  a  novel  of  purpose, 
or  what  the  Germans  call  a  tendenz-roman;  as  Dick- 
ens did,  for  example,  when  he  attacked  imprison- 
ment for  debt,  in  Pickwick  ;  the  poor  laws,  in  Oliver 
Twist;  the  Court  of  Chancery,  in  Bleak  House; 
and  the  Circumlocution  office,  in  Little  Dorrit. 

Next  to  the  novel,  the  essay  has  been  the  most 
overflowing  literary  form  used  by  the  writers  of  this 
generation — a  form,  characteristic,  it  may  be,  of  an 
age  which  "lectures,  not  creates."  It  is  not  the 
essay  of  Bacon,  nor  yet  of  Addison,  nor  of  Lamb, 
but  attempts  a  complete  treatment.  Indeed,  many 
longish  books,  like  Carlyle's  Heroes  and  Hero  Wor- 
ship and  Ruskin's  Modern  Painters,  are,  in  spirit, 
rather  literary  essays  than  formal  treatises.  The 
most  popular  essayist  and  historian  of  his  time  was 
Thomas  Babington  Macaulay  (1800-1859),  an  ac~ 
tive  and  versatile  man,  who  won  splendid  success 
in  many  fields  of  labor.  He  was  prominent  in  pub- 
lic life  as  one  of  the  leading  orators  and  writers  of 
the  Whig  party.  He  sat  many  times  in  the  House 
of  Commons,  as  member  for  Calne,  for  Leeds,  and 


DEATH  OF  SCOTT  TO  PRESENT  TIME.     277 

for  Edinburgh,  and  took  a  distinguished  part  in 
the  debates  on  the  Reform  bill  of  1832.  He  held 
office  in  several  Whig  governments,  and  during  his 
four  years'  service  in  British  India,  as  member  of 
the  Supreme  Council  of  Calcutta,  he  did  valuable 
work  in  promoting  education  in  that  province,  and 
in  codifying  the  Indian  penal  law.  After  his  return 
to  England,  and  especially  after  the  publication  of 
his  History  of  England  from  The  Accession  of 
James  //.,  honors  and  appointments  of  all  kinds 
were  showered  upon  him,  In  1857  he  was  raised 
to  the  peerage  as  Baron  Macaulay  of  Rothley. 

Macaulay's  equipment,  as  a  writer  on  historical 
and  biographical  subjects,  was,  in  some  points, 
unique.  His  reading  was  prodigious,  and  his 
memory  so  tenacious,  that  it  was  said,  with  but 
little  exaggeration,  that  he  never  forgot  any  thing 
that  he  had  read.  He  could  repeat  the  whole  of 
Paradise  Lost  by  heart,  and  thought  it  probable 
that  he  could  rewrite  Sir  Charles  Grandison  from 
memory.  In  his  books,  in  his  speeches  in  the 
House  of  Commons,  and  in  private  conversation — 
for  he  was  an  eager  and  fluent  talker,  running  on 
often  for  hours  at  a  stretch — he  was  never  at  a  loss 
to  fortify  and  illustrate  his  positions  by  citation 
after  citation  of  dates,  names,  facts  of  all  kinds, 
and  passages  quoted  verbatim  from  his  multifarious 
reading.  The  first  of  Macaulay's  writings  to  at- 
tract general  notice  was  his  article  on  Milton, 
printed  in  the  August  number  of  the  Edinburgh 
Review,  for  1825.  The  editor,  Lord  Jeffrey,  in 


278  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

acknowledging  the  receipt  of  the  MS.,  wrote  to  his 
new  contributor,  "  The  more  I  think,  the  less  I 
can  conceive  where  you  picked  up  that  style." 
That  celebrated  style — about  which  so  much  has 
since  been  written — was  an  index  to  the  mental 
character  of  its  owner.  Macaulay  was  of  a  confi- 
dent, sanguine,  impetuous  nature.  He  had  great 
common  sense,  and  he  saw  what  he  saw  quickly 
and  clearly,  but  he  did  not  see  very  far  below  the 
surface.  He  wrote  with  the  conviction  of  an  ad- 
vocate, and  the  easy  omniscience  of  a  man  whose 
learning  is  really  nothing  more  than  "  general  in- 
formation," raised  to  a  very  high  power,  rather 
than  with  the  subtle  penetration  of  an  original  or 
truly  philosophic  intellect,  like  Coleridge's  or  De 
Quincey's'.  He  always  had  at  hand  explanations  of 
events  or  of  characters,  which  were  admirably  easy 
and  simple — -too  simple,  indeed,  for  the  compli- 
cated phenomena  which  they  professed  to  explain. 
His  style  was  clear,  animated,  showy,  and  even  its 
faults  were  of  an  exciting  kind.  It  was  his  habit 
to  give  piquancy  to  his  writing  by  putting  things 
concretely.  Thus,  instead  of  saying,  in  general 
terms — as  Hume  or  Gibbon  might  have  done — 
that  the  Normans  and  Saxons  began  to  mingle  about 
1200,  he  says:  "The  great  grandsons  of  those  who 
had  fought  under  William  and  the  great  grandsons 
of  those  who  had  fought  under  Harold  began  to  draw 
near  to  each  other."  Macaulay  was  a  great  scene 
painter,  who  neglected  delicate  truths  of  detail  for 
exaggerated  distemper  effects.  He  used  the  rhe- 


DEATH  OF  SCOTT  TO  PRESENT  TIME.     279 

torical  machinery  of  climax  and  hyperbole  for  all 
that  it  was  worth,  and  he  "  made  points  " — as  in  his 
essay  on  Bacon — by  creating  antithesis.  In  his 
History  of  England,  he  inaugurated  the  picturesque 
method  of  historical  writing.  The  book  was  as 
fascinating  as  any  novel.  Macaulay,  like  Scott,  had 
the  historic  imagination,  though  his  method  of 
turning  history  into  romance  was  very  different 
from  Scott's.  Among  his  essays,  the  best  are  those 
which,  like  the  ones  on  Lord  Clive,  Warren  Hast- 
ings, and  Frederick  the  Great,  deal  with  historical 
subjects;  or  those  which  deal  with  literary  subjects 
under  their  public  historic  relations,  such  as  the 
essays  on  Addison,  Bunyan,  and  The  Comic  Drama- 
tists of  the  Restoration.  "  I  have  never  written  a 
page  of  criticism  on  poetry,  or  the  fine  arts,"  wrote 
Macaulay,  "  which  I  would  not  burn  if  I  had  the 
power."  Nevertheless  his  own  Lays  of  Ancient 
Rome,  1842,  are  good,  stirring  verse  of  the  em- 
phatic and  declamatory  kind,  though  their  quality 
may  be  rather  rhetorical  than  poetic. 

Our  critical  time  has  not  forborne  to  criticize  it- 
self, and  perhaps  the  writer  who  impressed  himself 
most  strongly  upon  his  generation  was  the  one  who 
railed  most  desperately  against  the  "  spirit  of  the 
age."  Thomas  Carlyle  (1795-1881)  was  occupied 
between  1822  and  1830  chiefly  in  imparting  to  the 
British  public  a  knowledge  of  German  literature. 
He  published,  among  other  things,  a  Life  of  Schil- 
ler, a  translation  of  Goethe's  Wilhelm  Meister,  and 
two  volumes  of  translations  from  the  German  ro- 


280  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

mancers — Tieck,  Hoffmann,  Richter,  and  Fouque*, 
and  contributed  to  the  Edinburgh  and  Foreign  Re- 
view, articles  on  Goethe,  Werner,  Novalis,  Richter, 
German  playwrights,  the  Nibelungen  Lied,  etc.  His 
own  diction  became  more  and  more  tinctured  with 
Germanisms.  There  was  something  Gothic  in  his 
taste,  which  was  attracted  by  the  lawless,  the  gro- 
tesque, and  the  whimsical  in  the  writings  of  Jean 
Paul  Richter.  His  favorite  among  English  humor- 
ists wa.s  Sterne,  who  has  a  share  of  these  same 
qualities.  He  spoke  disparagingly  of  "  the  sensu- 
ous literature  of  the  Greeks,"  and  preferred  the 
Norse  to  the  Hellenic  mythology.  Even  in  his  ad- 
mirable critical  essays  on  Burns,  on  Richter,  on 
Scott,  Diderot,  and  Voltaire,  which  are  free  from 
his  later  mannerism — written  in  English,  and  not 
in  Carlylese — his  sense  of  spirit  is  always  more  live- 
ly than  his  sense  of  form.  He  finally  became  so 
impatient  of  art  as  to  maintain — half-seriously — 
the  paradox  that  Shakspere  would  have  done  bet- 
ter to  write  in  prose.  In  three  of  these  early  es- 
says— on  the  Signs  of  the  Times,  1829;  on  History, 
1830;  and  on  Characteristics,  1831 — are  to  be  found 
the  germs  of  all  his  later  writings.  The  first  of 
these  was  an  arraignment  of  the  mechanical  spirit 
of  the  age.  In  every  province  of  thought  he  dis- 
covered too  great  a  reliance  upon  systems,  institu- 
tions, machinery,  instead  of  upon  men.  Thus,  in 
religion,  we  have  Bible  Societies,  "machines  for 
converting  the  heathen."  "  In  defect  of  Raphaels 
and  Angelos  and  Mozarts,  we  have  royal  acade- 


DEATH  OF  SCOTT  TO  PRESENT  TIME.     281 

mies  of  painting,  sculpture,  music."  In  like  man- 
ner, he  complains,  government  is  a  machine.  "  Its 
duties  and  faults  are  not  those  of  a  father,  but  of 
an  active  parish-constable."  Against  the  "police 
theory,"  as  distinguished  from  the  "  paternal  "  the- 
ory of  government,  Carlyle  protested  with  ever- 
shriller  iteration.  In  Chartism,  1839  ;  Past  and 
Present,  1843  ;  and  Latter-day  Pamphlets,  1850,  he 
denounced  this  laissez  faire  idea.  The  business 
of  government,  he  repeated,  is  to  govern  ;  but  this 
view  makes  it  its  business  to  refrain  from  govern- 
ing. He  fought  most  fiercely  against  the  conclu- 
sions of  political  economy,  "the  dismal  science," 
which,  he  said,  affirmed  that  men  were  guided  ex- 
clusively by  their  stomachs.  He  protested,  too, 
against  the  Utilitarians,  followers  of  Ben-tham  and 
Mill,  with  their  "greatest  happiness  principle," 
which  reduced  virtue  to  a  profit-and-loss  account. 
Carlyle  took  issue  with  modern  liberalism  ;  he  ridi- 
culed the  self-gratulation  of  the  time,  all  the  talk 
about  progress  of  the  species,  unexampled  pros- 
perity, etc.  But  he  was  reactionary  without  being 
conservative.  He  had  studied  the  French  Revolu- 
tion, and  he  saw  the  fateful,  irresistible  approach 
of  democracy.  He  had  no  faith  in  government 
"by  counting  noses,"  and  he  hated  talking  parlia- 
ments ;  but  neither  did  he  put  trust  in  an  aristoc- 
racy that  spent  its  time  in  "preserving  the  game." 
What  he  wanted  was  a  great  individual  ruler,  a  real 
king  or  hero  ;  and  this  doctrine  he  set  forth  after- 
ward most  fully  in  Hero  Worship,  1841,  and  illus- 


282  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

trated  in  his  lives  of  representative  heroes,  such  as 
his  Cromwell's  Letters  and  Speeches,  1845,  and  his 
great  History  of  Frederick  the  Great,  1858-1865. 
Cromwell  and  Frederick  were  well  enough  ;  but  as 
Carlyle  grew  older,  his  admiration  for  mere  force 
grew,  and  his  latest  hero  was  none  other  than  that 
infamous  Dr.  Francia,  the  South  American  dicta- 
tor, whose  career  of  bloody  and  crafty  crime  hor- 
rified the  civilized  world. 

The  essay  on  History  was  a  protest  against  the 
scientific  view  of  history  which  attempts  to  explain 
away  and  account  for  the  wonderful.  "  Wonder," 
he  wrote  in  Sartor  Rcsartus,  "  is  the  basis  of  all 
worship."  He  defined  history  as  "the  essence  of 
innumerable  biographies."  "Mr.  Carlyle,"  said 
the  Italian  patriot,  Mazzini,  "comprehends  only 
the  individual.  The  nationality  of  Italy  is,  in  his 
eyes,  the  glory  of  having  produced  Dante  and 
Christopher  Columbus."  This  trait  comes  out  in 
his  greatest  book,  The  French  Revolution,  1837, 
which  is  a  mighty  tragedy,  enacted  by  a  few  lead- 
ing characters,  Mirabeau,  Danton,  Napoleon.  He 
loved  to  emphasize  the  superiority  of  history 
over  fiction  as  dramatic  material.  The  third  of 
the  three  essays  mentioned  was  a  Jeremiad  on  the 
morbid  self-consciousness  of  the  age,  which  shows 
itself  in  religion  and  philosophy,  as  skepticism 
and  introspective  metaphysics;  and  in  literature, 
as  sentimentalism,  and  "view-hunting." 

But  Carlyle's  epoch-making  book  was  Sartor  Re- 
Tailor  Re  tailored),  published  mFraser's 


DEATH  OF  SCOTT  TO  PRESENT  TIME.     283 

Magazine  for  1833-1834,  and  first  reprinted  in  book 
form  in  America.  This  was  a  satire  upon  shams, 
conventions,  the  disguises  which  overlie  the  most 
spiritual  realities  of  the  soul.  It  purported  to  be 
the  life  and  "clothes-philosophy"  of  a  certain 
Diogenes  Teufelsdrockh,  Professor  der  Allerlet 
Wissenschaft — of  things  in  general — in  the  Uni- 
versity of  Weissnichtwo.  "Society,"  said  Carlyle, 
"is  founded  upon  cloth,"  following  the  suggestions 
of  Lear's  speech  to  the  naked  bedlam  beggar : 
"  Thou  art  the  thing  itself  :  unaccommodated  man 
is  no  more  but  such  a  poor,  bare,  forked  animal 
as  thou  art;"  and  borrowing  also,  perhaps,  an  iron- 
ical hint  from  a  paragraph  in  Swift's  Tale  of  a 
Tub:  "A  sect  was  established  who  held  the  uni- 
verse to  be  a  large  suit  of  clothes.  ...  If  certain 
ermines  or  furs  be  placed  in  a  certain  position,  we 
style  them  a  judge ;  and  so  an  apt  conjunction  of 
lawn  and  black  satin  we  entitle  a  bishop."  In 
Sartor  Resartus  Carlyle  let  himself  go.  It  was 
willful,  uncouth,  amorphous,  titanic.  There  was 
something  monstrous  in  the  combination,  the  hot 
heart  of  the  Scot  married  to  the  transcendental 
dream  of  Germany.  It  was  not  English,  said  the 
reviewers  ;  it  was  not  sense  ;  it  was  disfigured  by 
obscurity  and  "  mysticism."  Nevertheless  even  the 
thin-witted  and  the  dry-witted  had  to  acknowl- 
edge the  powerful  beauty  of  many  chapters  and 
passages,  rich  with  humor,  eloquence,  poetry, 
deep-hearted  tenderness,  or  passionate  scorn. 
Carlyle  was  a  voracious  reader,  and  the  plunder 


284  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

of  whole  literatures  is  strewn  over  his  pages.  He 
flung  about  the  resources  of  the  language  with  a 
giant's  strength,  and  made  new  words  at  every 
turn.  The  concreteness  and  the  swarming  fertil- 
ity of  his  mind  are  evidenced  by  his  enormous  vo- 
cabulary, computed  greatly  to  exceed  Shakspere's, 
or  any  other  single  writer's  in  the  English  tongue. 
His  style  lacks  the  crowning  grace  of  simplicity 
and  repose.  It  astonishes,  but  it  also  fatigues. 

Carlyle's  influence  has  consisted  more  in  his 
attitude  than  in  any  special  truth  which  he  has 
preached.  It  has  been  the  influence  of  a  moralist, 
of  a  practical,  rather  than  a  speculative,  philoso- 
pher. "The  end  of  man,"  he  wrote,  "  is  an  action, 
not  a  thought."  He  has  not  been  able  to  persuade 
the  time  that  it  is  going  wrong,  but  his  criticisms 
have  been  wholesomely  corrective  of  its  self- 
conceit.  In  a  democratic  age  he  has  insisted 
upon  the  undemocratic  virtues  of  obedience,  si- 
lence, and  reverence.  Ehrfurcht  —  reverence  — 
the  text  of  his  address  to  the  students  of  Edin- 
burgh University,  in  1866,  is  the  last  word  of  his 
philosophy. 

In  1830  Alfred  Tennyson  (1809 ),  a  young 

graduate  of  Cambridge,  published  a  thin  duodecimo 
of  154  pages,  entitled  Poems,  Chiefly  Lyrical.  The 
pieces  in  this  little  volume,  like  the  Sleeping  Beauty, 
Ode  to  Memory,  and  Recollections  of  the  Arabian 
Nights,  were  full  of  color,  fragrance,  melody;  but 
they  had  a  dream-like  character,  and  were  without 
definite  theme,  resembling  an  artist's  studies,  or 


DEATH  OF  SCOTT  TO  PRESENT  TIME.     285 

exercises  in  music — a  few  touches  of  the  brush,  a 
few  sweet  chords,  but  no  aria.  A  number  of  them 
— Claribel,  Lilian,  Adeline,  Isabel,  Mariana,  Mad- 
eline— were  sketches  of  women;  not  character  por- 
traits, like  Browning's  Men  and  Women,  but  im- 
pressions of  temperament,  of  delicately  differen- 
tiated types  of  feminine  beauty.  In  Mariana, 
expanded  from  a  hint  of  the  forsaken  maid,  in 
Shakspere's  Measure  for  Measure,  "  Mariana  at 
the  moated  grange,"  the  poet  showed  an  art  then 
peculiar,  but  since  grown  familiar,  of  heightening 
the  central  feeling  by  landscape  accessories.  The 
level  waste,  the  stagnant  sluices,  the  neglected 
garden,  the  wind  in  the  single  poplar,  re-enforce,  by 
their  monotonous  sympathy,  the  loneliness,  the 
hopeless  waiting  and  weariness  of  life  in  the  one 
human  figure  of  the  poem.  In  Mariana,  the  Ode 
to  Memory,  and  the  Dying  Swan,  it  was  the  fens  of 
Cambridge  and  of  his  native  Lincolnshire  that  fur- 
nished Tennyson's  scenery. 

"  Stretched  wide  and  wild,  the  waste  enormous  marsh, 

Where  from  the  frequent  bridge, 

Like  emblems  of  infinity, 

The  trenched  waters  run  from  sky  to  sky." 

A  second  collection,  published  in  1833,  exhibited 
a  greater  scope  and  variety,  but  was  still  in  his 
earlier  manner.  The  studies  of  feminine  types 
were  continued  in  Margaret,  Fatima,  Eleanore, 
Mariana  in  the  South,  and  A  Dream  of  Fair 
Women,  suggested  by  Chaucer's  Legend  of  Good 


286  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

Women.  In  the  Lady  of  Skalott,  the  poet  first 
touched  the  Arthurian  legends.  The  subject  is 
the  same  as  that  of  Elaine,  in  the  Idylls  of  the 
King,  but  the  treatment  is  shadowy,  and  even  alle- 
gorical. In  Oenone  and  the  Lotus  Eaters,  he 
handled  Homeric  subjects,  but  in  a  romantic  fash- 
ion, which  contrasts  markedly  with  the  style  of 
his  later  pieces,  Ulysses  and  Tithonus.  These  last 
have  the  true  classic  severity,  and  are  among  the 
noblest  specimens  of  weighty  and  sonorous  blank 
verse  in  modern  poetry.  In  general,  Tennyson's 
art  is  unclassical.  It  is  rich,  ornate,  composite* 
not  statuesque,  so  much  as  picturesque.  He  is  *. 
great  painter,  and  the  critics  complain  that  in 
passages  calling  for  movement  and  action — a  battle, 
a  tournament,  or  the  like — his  figures  stand  still  as 
in  a  tableau;  and  they  contrast  such  passages  un- 
favorably with  scenes  of  the  same  kind  in  Scott, 
and  with  Browning's  spirited  ballad,  How  we 
brought  the  Good  News  from  Ghent  to  Aix.  In  the 
Palace  of  Art,  these  elaborate  pictorial  effects  were 
combined  with  allegory;  in  the  Lotus  Eaters,  with 
that  expressive  treatment  of  landscape,  noted  in 
Mariana  j  the  lotus  land,  "  in  which  it  seemed 
always  afternoon,"  reflecting  and  promoting  the 
enchanted  indolence  of  the  heroes.  Two  of  the 
pieces  in  this  1833  volume,  the  May  Queen  and  the 
Miller's  Daughter,  were  Tennyson's  first  poems  of 
the  affections,  and  as  ballads  of  simple,  rustic  life, 
they  anticipated  his  more  perfect  idyls  in  blank 
verse,  such  as  Dora,  the  Brook,  Edwin  Morris,  and 


DEATH  OF  SCOTT  TO  PRESENT  TIME.    287 

the  Gardener 's  Daughter.  The  songs  in  the  Miller's 
Daughter  had  a  more  spontaneous,  lyrical  move- 
ment than  any  thing  that  he  had  yet  pub- 
lished, and  foretokened  the  lovely  songs  which 
interlude  the  divisions  of  the  Princess,  the  fa- 
mous Bugle  Song,  the  no-less  famous  Cradle  Song, 
and  the  rest.  In  1833  Tennyson's  friend,  Arthur 
Hallam,  died,  and  the  effect  of  this  great  sorrow 
upon  the  poet  was  to  deepen  and  strengthen  the 
character  of  his  genius.  It  turned  his  mind  in 
upon  itself,  and  set  it  brooding  over  questions 
which  his  poetry  had  so  far  left  untouched;  the 
meaning  of  life  and  death,  the  uses  of  adversity, 
the  future  of  the  race,  the  immortality  of  the  soul, 
and  the  dealings  of  God  with  mankind. 

"  Thou  madest  Death:  and,  lo,  thy  foot 
Is  on  the  skull  which  thou  hast  made." 

His  elegy  on  Hallam,  In  Memoriam,  was  not 
published  till  1850.  He  kept  it  by  him  all  those 
years,  adding  section  after  section,  gathering  up 
into  it  whatever  reflections  crystallized  about  its 
central  theme.  It  is  his  most  intellectual  and  most 
individual  work,  a  great  song  of  sorrow  and  con- 
solation. In  1842  he  published  a  third  collection 
of  poems,  among  which  were  Locksley  Hall,  dis- 
playing a  new  strength  of  passion  ;  Ulysses,  sug- 
gested by  a  passage  in  Dante  :  pieces  of  a  specu- 
lative cast,  like  the  Two  Voices  and  the  Vision  of 
Sin;  the  song  Break,  Break,  Break,  which  preluded 
In  Memoriam  ;  and,  lastly,  some  additional  grop- 


288  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

ings  toward  the  subject  of  the  Arthurian  romance, 
such  as  Sir  Galahad,  Sir  Launcelot  and  Queen 
Guinevere  and  Morte  d 'Arthur.  The  last  was  in 
blank  verse,  and,  as  afterward  incorporated  in  the 
Passing  of  Arthur,  forms  one  of  the  best  passages 
in  the  Idylls  of  the  King.  The  Princess,  a  Medley, 
published  in  1849,  represents  the  eclectic  character 
of  Tennyson's  art ;  a  medieval  tale  with  an  ad- 
mixture of  modern  sentiment,  and  with  the  very 
modern  problem  of  woman's  sphere  for  its  theme. 
The  first  four  Idylls  of  the  King,  1859,  with  those 
since  added,  constitute,  when  taken  together,  an 
epic  poem  on  the  old  story  of  King  Arthur.  Ten- 
nyson went  to  Malory's  Morte  d' Arthur  for  his 
material,  but  the  outline  of  the  first  idyl,  Enid,  was 
taken  from  Lady  Charlotte  Guest's  translation  of 
the  Welsh  Mabinogion.  In  the  idyl  of  Guinevere 
Tennyson's  genius  reached  its  high-water  mark. 
The  interview  between  Arthur  and  his  fallen  queen 
is  marked  by  a  moral  sublimity  and  a  tragic  intens- 
ity which  move  the  soul  as  nobly  as  any  scene  in 
modern  literature.  Here,  at  least,  the  art  is  pure 
and  not  "  decorated  ; "  the  effect  is  produced  by 
the  simplest  means,  and  all  is  just,  natural,  and 
grand.  Maud — a  love  novel  in  verse — published 
in  1855,  and  considerably  enlarged  in  1856,  had 
great  sweetness  and  beauty,  particularly  in  its 
Ivrical  portions,  but  it  was  uneven  in  execution, 
imperfect  in  design,  and  marred  by  lapses  into 
mawkishness  and  excesses  in  language.  Since 
1860  Tennyson  has  added  little  of  permanent 


DEATH  OF  SCOTT  TO  PRESENT  TIME.     289 

value  to  his  work.  His  dramatic  experiments,  like 
Queen  Mary,  are  not,  on  the  whole,  successful, 
though  it  would  be  unjust  to  deny  dramatic  power 
to  the  poet  who  has  written,  upon  one  hand,  Guin- 
evere and  the  Passing  of  Arthur,  and  upon  the 
other  the  homely,  dialectic  monologue  of  the 
Northern  Farmer. 

When  we  tire  of  Tennyson's  smooth  perfection, 
of  an  art  that  is  over  exquisite,  and  a  beauty 
that  is  well-nigh  too  beautiful,  and  crave  a  rougher 
touch,  and  a  meaning  that  will  not  yield  itself  too 
readily,  we  turn  to  the  thorny  pages  of  his  great 

contemporary,  Robert  Browning  (1812 ).    Dr. 

Holmes  says  that  Tennyson  is  white  meat  and 
Browning  is  dark  meat.  A  masculine  taste,  it  is 
inferred,  is  shown  in  a  preference  for  the  gamier 
flavor.  Browning  makes  us  think ;  his  poems  are 
puzzles,  and  furnish  business  for  "  Browning  So- 
cieties." There  are  no  Tennyson  societies,  be- 
cause Tennyson  is  his  own  interpreter.  Intellect 
in  a  poet  may  display  itself  quite  as  properly  in  the 
construction  of  his  poem  as  in  its  content ;  we 
value  a  building  for  its  architecture,  and  not  en- 
tirely for  the  amount  of  timber  in  it.  Browning's 
thought  never  wears  so  thin  as  Tennyson's  some- 
times does  in  his  latest  verse,  where  the  trick  of 
his  style  goes  on  of  itself  with  nothing  behind  it. 
Tennyson,  at  his  worst,  is  weak.  Browning,  when 
not  at  his  best,  is  hoarse.  Hoarseness,  in  itself, 
is  no  sign  of  strength.  In  Browning,  however, 
the  failure  is  in  art,  not  in  thought. 
19 


290  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

He  chooses  his  subjects  from  abnormal  charac- 
ter types,  such  as  are  presented,  for  example,  in 
Caliban  upon  Setebos,  the  Grammarian's  Funeral, 
My  Last  Duchess,  and  Mr.  Sludge,  the  Medium. 
These  are  all  psychological  studies,  in  which  the 
poet  gets  into  the  inner  consciousness  of  a  mon- 
ster, a  pedant,  a  criminal,  and  a  quack,  and  gives 
their  point  of  view.  They  are  dramatic  solilo- 
quies; but  the  poet's  self-identification  with  each 
of  his  creations,  in  turn,  remains  incomplete.  His 
curious,  analytic  observation,  his  way  of  looking  at 
the  soul  from  outside,  gives  a  doubleness  to  the 
monologues  in  his  Dramatic  Lyrics,  1845,  Men  and 
Women,  1855,  Dramatis  Persona,  1864,  and  other 
collections  of  the  kind.  The  words  are  the  words 
of  Caliban  or  Mr.  Sludge  ;  but  the  voice  is  the 
voice  of  Robert  Browning.  His  first  complete 
poem,  Paracelsus,  1835,  aimed  to  give  the  true  in- 
wardness of  the  career  of  the  famous  i6th  century 
doctor,  whose  name  became  a  synonym  with  char- 
latan. His  second,  Sordello,  1840,  traced  the  strug- 
gles of  an  Italian  poet  who  lived  before  Dante,  and 
could  not  reconcile  his  life  with  his  art.  Paracel- 
sus was  hard,  but  Sordello  was  incomprehensible. 
Mr.  Browning  has  denied  that  he  is  ever  perverse- 
ly crabbed  or  obscure.  Every  great  artist  must  be 
allowed  to  say  things  in  his  own  way,  and  obscur- 
ity has  its  artistic  uses,  as  the  Gothic  builders 
knew.  But  there  are  two  kinds  of  obscurity  in 
literature.  One  is  inseparable  from  the  subtlety 
and  difficulty  of  the  thought  or  the  compression 


DEATH  OF  SCOTT  TO  PRESENT  TIME.     291 

and  pregnant  indirectness  of  the  phrase.  Instances 
of  this  occur  in  the  clear  deeps  of  Dante,  Shaks- 
pere,  and  Goethe.  The  other  comes  from  a  vice 
of  style,  a  willfully  enigmatic  and  unnatural  way  of 
expressing  thought.  Both  kinds  of  obscurity  exist 
in  Browning.  He  is  a  deep  and  subtle  thinker; 
but  he  is  also  a  very  eccentric  writer,  abrupt,  harsh, 
disjointed.  It  has  been  well  said  that  the  reader 
of  Browning  learns  a  new  dialect.  But  one  need 
not  grudge  the  labor  that  is  rewarded  with  an  in- 
tellectual pleasure  so  peculiar  and  so  stimulating. 
The  odd,  grotesque  impression  made  by  his  poetry 
arises,  in  part,  from  his  desire  to  use  the  artistic 
values  of  ugliness,  as  well  as  of  obscurity;  to  avoid 
the  shallow  prettiness  that  comes  from  blinking  the 
disagreeable  truth  :  not  to  leave  the  saltness  out  of 
the  sea.  Whenever  he  emerges  into  clearness,  as 
he  does  in  hundreds  of  places,  he  is  a  poet  of  great 
qualities.  There  are  a  fire  and  a  swing  in  his  Cav- 
alier  Tunes,  and  in  pieces  like  the  Glwe  and  the 
Lost  Leader ;  and  humor  in  such  ballads  as  the 
Pied  Piper  of  Hamelin  and  the  Soliloquy  of  the 
Spanish  Cloister,  which  appeal  to  the  most  con- 
servative reader.  He  seldom  deals  directly  in 
the  pathetic,  but  now  and  then,  as  in  Evelyn 
Hope,  the  Last  Ride.  Together,  or  the  Incident  of 
the  French  Camp,  a  tenderness  comes  over  the 
strong  verse 

"  as  sheathes 
A  film  the  mother  eagle's  eye, 

When  her  bruised  eaglet  breathes." 


292  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

Perhaps  the  most  astonishing  example  of  Brown- 
ing's mental  vigor  is  the  huge  composition,  entitled 
The  Ring  and  the  Book,  1868,  a  narrative  poem  in 
twenty-one  thousand  lines,  in  which  the  same  story 
is  repeated  eleven  times  in  eleven  different  ways. 
It  is  the  story  of  a  criminal  trial  which  occurred  at 
Rome  about  1700,  the  trial  of  one  Count  Guido 
for  the  murder  of  his  young  wife.  First  the  poet 
tells  the  tale  himself;  then  he  tells  what  one-half 
of  the  world  says  and  what  the  other ;  then  he 
gives  the  deposition  of  the  dying  girl,  the  testimo- 
ny of  witnesses,  the  speech  made  by  the  count  in 
his  own  defense,  the  arguments  of  counsel,  etc., 
and,  finally,  the  judgment  of  the  pope.  So  won- 
derful are  Browning's  resources  in  casuistry,  and 
so  cunningly  does  he  ravel  the  intricate  motives 
at  play  in  this  tragedy  and  lay  bare  the  secrets  of 
the  heart,  that  the  interest  increases  at  each  repe- 
tition of  the  tale.  He  studied  the  Middle  Age 
carefully,  not  for  its  picturesque  externals,  its 
feudalisms,  chivalries,  and  the  like ;  but  because 
he  found  it  a  rich  quarry  of  spiritual  monstros- 
ities, strange  outcroppings  of  fanaticism,  super- 
stition, and  moral  and  mental  distortion  of  all 
shapes.  It  furnished  him  especially  with  a  great 
variety  of  ecclesiastical  types,  such  as  are  painted 
in  Fra  Lippo  Lippi,  Bishop  B  long  rani's  Apology, 
and  The  Bishop  Orders  his  Tomb  in  St.  Praxed's 
Church. 

Browning's  dramatic  instinct  has  always  attracted 
him  to  the  stage.     His  tragedy,  Straff  or  d  (1837), 


DEATH  OF  SCOTT  TO  PRESENT  TIME.      293 

was  written  for  Macready,  and  put  on  at  Covent 
Garden  Theater,  but  without  pronounced  success. 
He  has  written  many  fine  dramatic  poems,  like 
Pippa  Passes,  Colombes  Birthday,  and  In  a  Bal- 
cony; and  at  least  two  good  acting  plays,  I.uria 
and  A  Blot  in  the  Scutcheon.  The  last  named  has 
recently  been  given  to  the  American  public,  with 
Lawrence  Barrett's  careful  and  intelligent  pres- 
entation of  the  leading  role.  The  motive  of  the 
tragedy  is  somewhat  strained  and  fantastic,  but  it 
is,  notwithstanding,  very  effective  on  the  stage. 
It  gives  one  an  unwonted  thrill  to  listen  to  a 
play,  by  a  living  English  writer,  which  is  really 
literature.  One  gets  a  faint  idea  of  what  it 
must  have  been  to  assist  at  the  first  night  of 
Hamlet. 

1.  Dickens.    Pickwick  Papers,  Nicholas  Nickle- 
by,  David  Copperfield,  Bleak  House,  Tale  of  Two 
Cities. 

2.  Thackeray.     Vanity  Fair,  Pendennis,  Henry 
Esmond,  The  Newcomes,  The  Four  Georges. 

3.  George  Eliot.     Scenes  of  Clerical  Life,  Mill 
on  the  Floss,  Silas  Marner,  Romola,  Adam  Bede, 
Middlemarch. 

4.  Macaulay.     Essays,  Lays  of  Ancient  Rome. 

5.  Carlyle.      Sartor  Resartus,  French  Revolu- 
tion, Essays  on  History,  Signs  of  the  Times,  Char- 
acteristics, Burns,  Scott,  Voltaire,  and  Goethe. 

6.  The  Works   of   Alfred   Tennyson  (6  vols.). 
London:  Strahan  &  Co.,  1872. 


294  ENGLISH  LITERATURE. 

7.  Selections  from  the  Poetical  Works  of  Robert 
Browning.     (2  vols.)     London  :   Smith,  Elder,   & 
Co.,  1880. 

8.  E.  C.  Stedman's  Victorian  Poets. 

9.  Henry   Morley's    English   Literature   in   the 
Reign  of  Victoria.     (Tauchnitz  Series.) 


THE   END. 


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to  do  great  good."  —  The  Beacon,  Boston. 

THE    NEW    CAME    OF    MYTHOLOGY. 

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CHAUTAUQUA  PRESS,  117  Franklin  St.,  Boston. 


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